


Waiting It Out

by aliceinchucks



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Abduction, Carlos & Kevin - Freeform, Desert Bluffs Carlos & Cecil, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Psychological Thriller, everyone is human, inspired by nyxrising, not all of these relationships are endgame or romantic, that's the closest genre I can figure but I don't wanna be presumptious and say it fits entirely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-10-02 16:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceinchucks/pseuds/aliceinchucks
Summary: “Where's Carlos?” He didn't mean for it to come out as a whisper.“How's your stomach feeling?” He turned to Cecil like he hadn't spoken.Cecil crawled backwards on the bed, fumbling over the edge of it. “Where am I?” He couldn't get enough air to his lungs, but every breath he did manage brought that smell, that rotting smell.He knew where he was.





	1. Chapter 1

There was too much light. His eyes stung from it even before he tried to open them. What was the point of eyelids again?

“Oh, my God. Thank God.”

There was too much light, and once his eyes were slitted they weren’t interpreting it into anything that made sense. His face was half mashed into the pillow. “Carlos?”

Maybe it was because of the tears he could feel dampening his cheeks, and probably still streaming out. He sneezed.

“Yeah, sweetie. Sorry, let me dim the lamp.” Carlos moved, and then it was darker. “Is there anything I can get you?” He was sitting next to him on the bed again.

“You're back.” He reached over and felt for Carlos’ hand. Carlos took his and squeezed lightly.

“Things wrapped up early. Looks like you picked up a bug while l was gone.”

“What's that smell?” Now that he noticed it, it permeated everything. It was vaguely familiar, like a snatch of an unpleasant dream, turning his stomach.

“What smell?” Carlos lifted his hand and kissed his palm. Cecil retched.

 

When he surfaced again, the tears had dried, crusting up the corners of his eyes. His body felt less like an extension of the bed and more like an independent unit with moveable parts. Carlos hadn't moved, or else was back.

He wiped at the crust in his eyes and sat up. Now that he could see better, one thing became alarmingly clear.

“This isn't our house.”

The bedroom was set up in a similar configuration to theirs, but it was larger and the furniture was not their own. The walls were red and looked almost damp. As he looked around, tendrils of unease snaked their way up from his gut, through his chest, to the inside of his throat.

“Yeah,” Carlos frowned, like a package he had ordered online turned out not to be quite what he'd hoped. “It was just like this when I got home. You didn't do this?”

Cecil stared at him. “No–Carlos, how could I have _done_ this? It's an entirely different room. It's _bigger_ , for God's sake.”

“Huh,” Carlos shrugged. “Well, you know Night Vale. Maybe it was time for a new house.” He seemed impassive, like it didn't really matter how it had happened, like he wasn't at all curious to get to the bottom of it. Slick dread slid into Cecil's limbs. He looked at the man slouched against the headboard next to him, really looked at him, at the casual sprawl of his legs across the blanket and the lazy curve of his mouth.

“Where's Carlos?” He didn't mean for it to come out as a whisper.

“Are you sure I can't get you anything, Cecil? How's your stomach feeling?” He turned to Cecil like he hadn't spoken.

Cecil crawled backwards on the bed, fumbling over the edge of it. “Where am I?” He couldn't get enough air to his lungs, but every breath he did manage brought that smell, that rotting smell. He knew where he was.

“You're in our house.”

“No, stop–” His mouth felt like Styrofoam and he had to pause to try and produce some saliva before he could get anything else out. “I-I know you're not him, stop it, who are you?”

“Well, as far as you’re concerned,” he shrugged and met Cecil’s stare with an almost bored one of his own, “I’m Carlos.”

Cecil dreaded from the completely unbothered look on the man’s face that dashing to the bedroom door and yanking at the handle might not do any good, but he had to try anyway. When it didn’t budge, his legs nearly gave out on him. The panic was clawing at his throat, squeezing his lungs.

“Sorry about the pretense,” the man was saying. “I thought it might help to ease you into it.”

“Into…?” Cecil's voice was just on the right side of functioning. “What–what is this, what are you doing?”

The man might have looked like Carlos, but he didn't really sound like him now that he didn't care to. His voice had dropped to something harder, though somehow not unfriendly. “I'm keeping you here.”

There was a stretch of silence before Cecil gave in and asked the only question. “ _Why_ ?”

“I have a plan,” he said, and the first notes of defensiveness crept into his voice.

Maybe it was the temporary illusion of safety that the physical distance currently between the two of them provided that allowed frustration to begin to mingle with Cecil's anxiety. “Care to share with the cl...woah, nevermind, nevermind, I don't need to know!”

The man who wasn't Carlos had pulled a long knife from the top drawer of the nightstand and was holding it casually on his thigh. He stood up.

“Please, I won't ask any questions, just please don't hurt me!” As insane as the situation had been, he hadn’t fully believed the claim of his intention to _keep him here_ until now. He felt suddenly weak and painfully regretful of his lack of any kind of fight training.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” the man said, as if that was a strange and amusing conclusion to come to. He placed the knife on the nightstand and then glanced between it and Cecil. “Don't get any ideas. You don't touch that. _I_ don't even touch that.”

Cecil glanced doubtfully at the hand that had been wielding it not a moment ago.

“Well I don't _usually._ I thought it would be a good idea to bring it out now, just in case.”

Cecil crossed his arms over his chest. A moment passed where neither of them moved. “So is it not _your_ kni–” The man curled his fingers around the hilt and he quieted, clearing his throat. The air was so heavily silent, no signs of any traffic or activity from outside, that he began to worry that the whole place had been soundproofed.

“Are you hungry?” The man asked, tucking the knife into a deep pocket of his pants.

He realized he was, a hollowness in his stomach now screaming to make itself known. Was he allowed to be? If he said yes, was he about to be fed his own pinky finger?

Apparently the man didn't require an answer, because he continued. “I've got some soup I can heat up.” As he came nearer to the door, Cecil inched farther away from it. There was a key in his hand, and Cecil immediately regretted not noticing where it had come from. He'd be sure to watch where it went.

Once the door was unlocked, his jailer turned back, waiting in the hall. “Come on.” Cecil hesitated, his eyes glued to that key. “Come _on._ ” He pictured the knife plunging deep into his collarbone, and went, the man following close behind him.

He seemed to be reasonably well-off judging by his house and furnishings, though the surfaces seemed unusually bare. Perhaps he’d locked away the usual decorative knick-knacks so that Cecil wouldn’t have anything he could use as a weapon. It was cleaner than he expected it to be based on the stench, which was both a relief and a bit disconcerting considering it still left him to wonder where exactly that was coming from.

The kitchen was an open area that bled into the living room, with only a counter dividing them. “Sit,” he said, gesturing to a barstool. Cecil sat.

He watched the man pull a covered bowl out of the fridge and tried to think of a conversation starter that wasn’t, _so, you’re a little bit out of your mind, huh?_

“So,” he started cautiously, folding his hands on the counter and hoping this wasn’t his life now, “is your name really Carlos?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately, before shaking his head a little like he’d forgotten for a moment he wasn’t playing pretend anymore. He pressed the start button on the microwave and the hum filled the room, jarringly loud. “No.”

There was a question that obviously followed, but Cecil hesitated to press it. He felt a bit like he was playing Russian roulette, and just because he hadn’t found the bullet yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t this time.

He watched the microwave timer count all the way down to zero but still jumped when it went off. The man who might be named anything but Carlos took out the bowl and opened a drawer under the counter, producing a spoon. Cecil wondered if there were knives in there.

The bowl was pushed toward him with the spoon in it and Cecil looked inside. It appeared to be broccoli cheese soup. He licked his lips and decided on what was hopefully the lesser of two risky actions by asking, “Is there any chance I can get you to try a spoon of this first?”

Not-Carlos chuckled, pulling the bowl back toward himself and bringing a spoonful to his lips. Cecil watched him swallow. “I just had this for dinner last night, haven’t gotten around to poisoning it.”

I. Singular. There were a few things Cecil had noticed about the house that suggested he didn’t live alone. Two pillows side by side. Two nightstands. Two barstools. Probably two people who weren’t used to much company. He didn’t know if this was a good thing or not, if he should be worried that the other person was worse than this one or if there’d be a chance of making an appeal to them.

Or maybe the other pillow, the other nightstand, was for him. He liked that idea less.

He burned his tongue on the first spoonful. His captor hadn’t even blown on it to cool it, but then again, neither had Cecil. He ate quickly despite the fact that it was too hot and without much regard for politeness. The man chuckled at him. Cecil thought about throwing the hot soup in his face, but he was so hungry.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

His stomach soured. “I wasn’t going to.”

It was quiet while he finished the rest of the bowl. What he really wanted now was water. He didn’t ask for it.

The man leaned back against the refrigerator, staring at his own shoes. “It’s Diego.”

Cecil sat there, holding his spoon, unsure what to do. “Oh.”

Diego pushed off from the fridge, surveying the room before announcing, “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

He sat up a little straighter. _Oh please don’t make me go in there with you, please–_ “O-okay.”

Diego gave him a look. “Don’t try anything.” Cecil’s head jerked in a tiny nod, eyes wide.

His heart began to pound as soon as he heard the door close. Surely he was being tested, but what if this was his only chance? He slid silently off the barstool, legs trembling as he rounded the counter and pulled open the silverware drawer. His hands were shaking so bad he had to do it at a sloth-like pace so he wouldn’t rattle everything inside. There were no knives. No forks. Only spoons. He pocketed one and pushed it shut.

He tried the front door just in case of a miracle, unsurprised when it didn’t give. Then he crept back toward the hallway and listened. He could hear Diego, still relieving himself. He had a few moments at least.

There was a tall window next to the TV in the living room. He made his way toward it, grateful for his socked feet. It was a normal kind of window with a crank at the bottom to open it, but on closer inspection he found that the frame had been nailed shut. A pitiful whine of despair left his throat unbidden accompanied by a chill down his spine at the obvious forethought, and he pulled uselessly at first the crank then the frame.

The toilet flushed. Desperate, he looked around for anything he could possibly throw at the window to break it. Even if Diego came out before he could get away, it might make enough noise to alert the neighbors.

There was a lamp on a table by the couch. He pulled aside the curtain and hesitated. He couldn’t see out the window. Diego might not have any neighbors. They might be in a rural area, with nothing for miles but fields or desert sands. He imagined Diego chasing him down on a sand dune and stabbing him repeatedly.

The bathroom door opened. Cecil was trembling head to toe, paralyzed by the window. He wasn’t even able to tell if his fears were rational anymore. His hand snaked into his pocket, closing over cool metal. “Please let me go,” he begged. “Whatever your plan is, I’m sure it can be done some other way.”

Diego was approaching, the light from the kitchen casting his face in shadow, a soft halo shining through the outline of his hair and giving him the appearance of some kind of angel of death. “I could kill you,” he conceded, completing the effect. “That would be efficient.”

Cecil wished he could make out his expression better, to see if he meant it. His tone told him nothing. When Diego got close enough, he panicked, curling in on himself and striking out artlessly with the handle of the spoon. He barely made contact. Diego pressed his palm to Cecil’s forehead and slammed his head into the wall. Blinding pain vibrated out from his skull and darkened his vision. He slid down the wall, tears springing to his eyes. “Please–” Before he could even try to string another word to that he was struck again. His head snapped to the side.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got long (comparatively). There wasn't a good place to split it. I have no regrets!  
> Also I love love love comments! But who doesn't? Thank you for comments!
> 
> [a note: this story takes place somewhere between episode 70 to 100, so any plot developments or characters introduced in the podcast after that point will not be included, which is why a certain character from episode 135 (who will not be named because spoilers [is a name a spoiler?], if you've heard the episode you probably know who I mean) does not exist, and instead we have Diego. Also because elements of this fic were largely inspired by nyxrising's Night Vale Presents youtube series (though this is a different plot) so we have Diego.]

“It’s just four days...”

“I knooow,” Cecil whined childishly, clinging to his love's arm and trailing his fingers down his chest. He was wearing a button down Cecil had gotten him for his birthday and looked positively dashing. “You’re going to wow all those science guys with your...science.”

“That’s not really the point of the conference.”

“They’re not gonna know what hit ‘em.”

“And then I’ll be back,” he murmured, hands smoothing down the sides of Cecil’s neck and over his shoulders, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. “And _then,_ soon,” he paused, waiting for Cecil to raise his eyes, a twinkle in his own. “You’re going to be my husband.”

Tingles ran down from Cecil’s scalp through the tips of his fingers. He closed his eyes at the sensation, biting down on a smile. “You’re going to be my husband,” he echoed in a whisper.

“It sounds even better when you say it.” Carlos leaned in to press a kiss to his lips. Cecil wilted against him, humming in his throat. He let him do most of the work, which Carlos did not seem to mind. Once their lips parted, he pecked several more kisses to Cecil’s mouth before fully pulling back, cradling the side of his face. “I’ll miss you.”

It was one of Cecil’s favorite, most precious things, when Carlos got all sentimental like this. “I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

“I know you will,” Carlos said. Cecil wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him close, nuzzling into his hair. Carlos tilted his head to whisper in his ear. “Because you can’t leave.”

Cecil’s nostrils filled with the scent of blood.

He yelped back into consciousness, his heart hammering. He sat up and immediately regretted it, black dots flooding over everything and sharp pain ringing out through his head. Now there was the coppery taste of blood as well as the smell, and he realized his mouth was full of it. Glancing around for a tissue box or a waste basket and finding none, he leaned over the edge of the bed and spat it onto the floor, and noted with a swooping of his stomach that it wasn’t the only dark stain on the carpet.

He squeezed his eyes shut, taking a moment to mourn the loss of the temporary safety and comfort his dream had provided before it had been twisted and then yanked away, forcing him to deal with the nightmare that was his reality.

He stuck out his tongue and felt a gash in it. He must have bitten it when his brain bounced around in his head like a kid without a seatbelt. A quick, gentle touch to his temple told him there was a bandage there, which was interesting. In the moment he’d been sure Diego was trying to kill him. Of course, now that he thought about it, if he’d really wanted him dead, the knife in his pocket would have been much more ‘efficient’, as he’d put it. What his actual goal had been, Cecil did not think he was qualified to suss out.

He’d also put him in his own bed again. Where was Diego sleeping? How long had he been out? What time of day had it even been to begin with?

He ran through the symptoms of concussion he knew off the top of his head and realized he’d already been experiencing a lot of them before his head had been bashed. The nausea was worse now, though.

And he really had to pee. The thought of leaving this room, where Diego currently was not, and moving somewhere that would potentially alert Diego to his consciousness, sent a tremor through Cecil’s limbs where he sat. No, he would stay put, he had to ignore it.

There wasn’t even the sound of the ticking of a clock. When he glanced around to see if there was one anywhere, his neck screamed in protest. Well. It wasn’t like he trusted clocks anyway. He had just decided that the most desireable course of action was to curl into a ball on the bed and let himself cry, when the door opened. Anger immediately flared in his veins at the sight of Diego entering, surprising Cecil by rivaling the fear he felt.

“You can’t just keep me here forever,” he said with more certainty than he felt in the moment. “People will be looking for me. Even if Carlos isn’t back yet, I have f-family, I have friends. I have a very public job, they'll notice if I'm not there.”

“Well, then you should have nothing to worry about, right?” Diego shrugged. Cecil stared at him. What did he mean? Why didn’t he care?

“How long?” he asked, scooting back against the headboard. Any scrap of distance he could get between them felt valuable.

“As long as it takes.”

His aggravation spiked. “As long as _what_ takes?”

Diego’s gaze stopped at a point on the floor, and Cecil followed it to the splatter of blood. The movement of his head sent it swimming. “That’ll be a bitch to get out.”

“Oh sorry, did my blood ruin your perfect carpet?” he asked flatly. It seemed he wasn’t going to get any answers.

For a moment Diego looked sheepish, like maybe he was a bit embarrassed at having violently smashed the head of a man he was holding captive in his house against the wall. He cleared his throat, scratching at the back of his head.

“Kevin is gone.”

Cecil blinked. _Carlos, I need help reacting to something._ “I’m sorry, Kevin?”

There was a low dresser along the wall of the bedroom. Diego sat on it and nodded, his arms crossed over his chest. “You know Kevin, right?”

He gave him a dark look. “I’m familiar.”

“Well, he’s gone.”

“Like...dead?”

“No!” Diego looked offended by the mere suggestion. “Like, missing. Not here.”

“I...wasn’t aware that Kevin was ever here.” It made sense, he supposed, if anything about having two neighboring towns with redundant populations made sense.

“He lives here. But he didn’t come home last night. I tried his phone, nothing.”

Well, this was a rather surreal conversation. “Do you suppose… maybe, hypothetically speaking, it has something to do with your decision to abduct a man and keep him in your home?”

Diego leaned forward, elbows on his knees, touching steepled fingers to his lips. “It’s possible.”

“Well _maybe_ , he would come back if you let me go.”

His captor slid down from the dresser. “There may have been other factors. Come out, I made breakfast.”

Cecil cursed under his breath, watching him go.

-

It was late. Night Vale was unusually peaceful, the streets quiet and the pleasant kind of warm, compelling Carlos to roll down the window of his car as he made his way back to the apartment. He was exhausted, the last few days having run him ragged, but the thought of finally being home kept his spirits up. The lack of signal to Night Vale from outside had been frustrating. He hadn’t been able to talk to Cecil or keep up to date with his team.

He pulled into his parking spot and paused his podcast, popping out the cassette adapter and unplugging it from his phone. Rachelle used to make fun of him for that cassette player when he'd sometimes give her rides back when he lived in the science district, but he liked his car, and didn’t mind that it was old. It had always served him well, and more recently he'd made some fond memories with it.

A light was on in their apartment. Cecil had waited up for him. He paused outside the door, straightening his clothes and smoothing his hair, before going inside. He tossed his keys on the counter and put his bag on the floor. On the couch, looking up from a pad of paper in his lap, was–

Kevin.

Carlos stood in the entryway. “Cecil, I need help reacting to something!”

“Oh, hi!” Kevin put his pad and pencil next to him and clasped his hands together. “Oh. This is a little awkward. Cecil isn’t here.”

“He’s not?”

Kevin pursed his lips. “Nooo.”

He frowned around at the room. “Where is he? What are you doing in my apartment?”

“I can address both of those questions by telling you that Cecil has been kidnapped.”

Carlos froze. “What?” The question came out more breath than sound, his heart chilling in his chest.

“He’s been kidnapped. Or is it person-napped if he’s not a child? Abducted, let’s go with abducted.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, because I saw him in my bed, right before I went to work the other day. He was out cold.”

Carlos closed his eyes, breathing in deep and slow through his nose. “Kevin.”

“Yes.”

“Did you kidnap Cecil?”

“I did not.”

“Kevin, you better start saying some really useful things really fast.”

“Okay,” Kevin leaned forward in his seat, then paused, glancing up at Carlos. “You might be more comfortable sitting down.”

“No, thank you.”

“Al-right. So basically, Diego’s been being a real piece of fuck lately, and also talking about how he was planning on kidnapping Cecil Palmer, and then, he did it.”

Maybe he did need to sit down. He walked on suddenly unsteady legs to a chair in the living room, and dropped down into it. “And Diego is?”

“My boyfriend.”

No, sitting was no good. He got up again, settling for pacing the length of the room. “Did he say _why_?”

“No, he’s been all moody,” he huffed. “But I’m guessing it’s part of some plot to take over Night Vale. He’s always thought that things would’ve worked a lot smoother the first time if he’d been around.”

“But you know where he is. He’s in your house.”

“Yes!” Kevin perked up. “And even better, I have a plan.”

-

Breakfast turned out to be bacon and eggs. The smell of it made the waves of nausea rolling through Cecil’s stomach worse, which was in itself remarkable considering the natural perfume of the house he’d been breathing in for… however long it had been. One night? Was that really possible?

He must have slipped out of consciousness for a moment because he hadn’t even been aware that Diego was finished serving things up, but a plate was under his nose. Diego was watching him with a furrowed brow, and it took Cecil a moment to register the look as concern. It smoothed away as soon as he saw him looking. “Do you think you can be trusted with a spoon?”

Cecil blinked down at the one on his plate. Diego was making a joke. If only he’d been so blasé about it last night. He could still see his own blood streaked on the wall over by the TV. Was it last night?

“I think I need a doctor,” he said.

The furrow was definitely not out of concern this time. “What would a doctor do?”

A bout of dizziness hit him and he nearly tipped over the side of the stool.

“Woah,” Diego had rounded the counter and put his hand on his shoulder. He flinched violently away from it, almost capsizing the stool in the process. Diego glared at him. “Cut that shit out. Eat your breakfast.”

There was a glass of water next to the plate. Cecil pounced on it, narrowing the possible range of time he had been in this house to shorter than the time it takes for a person to perish from thirst.

“I have some meds.” Diego was taking his breakfast standing over by the microwave. Cecil appreciated that he wasn’t sitting directly across from him, and that he wasn’t leaving Cecil to be the only one eating this time. “Like aspirin, or… what hurts?”

“Stomach. Head.” Everything, really, but those were the ones making it near impossible to think.

“I have some stuff for nausea too. Hold on.”

Cecil held on, because it had taken enough concentration to remain on his feet on the walk from the bedroom to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. Diego came back a moment later and dropped two small pills on his plate, next to the bacon. Cecil pushed his empty glass toward him and he refilled it.

“I know it probably doesn’t sound good right now, but see if you can get some food down,” Diego suggested, watching him take the pills.

Cecil started on the eggs slowly, and it wasn’t until the meds started to kick in and relieve some of the all-consuming pounding that it occurred to him to be afraid again, or to be freaked out by Diego’s almost gentle tone.

“You can rest as much as you need while I’m at work.”

Work. He worked somewhere. He was going to leave. For hours. Cecil realized he had frozen and took another bite of eggs. “What do you do?”

“I keep time.” At Cecil’s blank look, he waved his hand, moving to the sink to rinse his plate. “Scheduling, maximizing efficiency for a company.”

“Oh.” Sounded thrilling.

“Is there something wrong with the bacon?”

He blanched, heart picking up speed in anticipation. It took him a moment to get his mouth to work. “I’m vegetarian.”

Diego shut off the faucet, tension crystallizing his posture. Cecil didn’t breathe. “And you eat eggs?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

An eternity passed between them. Diego put his plate in the sink and picked up his glass. “This is all I made. You’ll be hungry today.”

Cecil found himself nodding. _That’s fine, that’s perfectly fine._

“I get back around 5.” Diego dried his hands on a dish towel. Cecil had no idea what time it was now. “You’ll wait in the bathroom.”

“The–what?”

“There’s a window in the bedroom, one in the living room.”

Oh God, he was serious. “No, I don’t–you don’t–”

“Come on. I have to go.” He came around the counter and stood in front of him. When Cecil didn’t move, he grabbed his arms and dragged him off the stool.

Cecil’s muscles seized up. “You don’t have to do this, Diego, I won’t go anywhere, I swear–”

“See, I don’t believe you.”

As Diego pushed him closer to the bathroom door, his body finally kicked in and he began to struggle. Diego’s grip on his bicep tightened. All he had to do was dip his hand into his pocket and Cecil stopped, stock-still, his heart slamming into his organs. But all his hand came out with was that little key. Cecil thought he might collapse, if not for the fact that he wasn’t allowed to.

He was shoved into the room, the door shut behind him. The lock clicked. “Why am I _here,_ Diego!” he shouted, slamming his fist into the door.

“It won’t be so bad,” came the voice through the door. “And this way you can go whenever you need to.”

That wasn’t even what he’d meant by _here_ in the moment, but that was great, being talked to like a dog.

“Diego!” he shouted again. There was no response this time. He heard sounds of movement for a few moments, and then the creak of the front door.

Then nothing.

He slumped against the door, sliding down until he was sitting. The cool tile seeped through the relatively thin material of his pants. He hadn’t changed clothes in maybe two days.

Supposing Diego worked a regular 9-5 job, it would be about eight hours in this bathroom. But he didn’t know if it was nine right now. It could be a lot earlier. The dark curtain had been covering the window while they ate breakfast, giving no hint of natural light.

He stuck his finger under the door. It fit, but only just. He stood and tried to rattle it on its frame, but it was solid. The screws of the hinges were on there tight. He cast around for something that might work as a substitute screwdriver, but the narrowest thing he could find was Diego’s toothbrush. Mustering all the strength he could piece together, he walked over to the bathtub and ran at the door full speed, ramming his shoulder into it. All that probably accomplished was ensuring he’d have a bruise later.

There was a box of tissues on the counter. He unfolded one flap of the cardboard box and ripped it off, then stuck it in the meager gap where the latch was, sliding it up and down. He’d done this with a credit card a few times when he’d locked himself out of the apartment, but that wasn’t a very good lock.

The very existence of a lock on the outside of this door, letting him know that Diego had clearly _planned_ on locking him in the bathroom even before he was here, was more than a little unsettling.

The cardboard seemed to push at something and his heart leapt. He wiggled it a little more and then tried the handle.

Nothing. A sob of frustration tore out of him. When a few more minutes of wiggling and shoving proved fruitless, he sunk back down to the floor, the piece of tissue box clutched in his hand, bent and crumpled. Even if he had gotten out of here, he’d just be in a larger prison. There was still the front door.

He cupped his hands on either side of his mouth and screamed, first wordlessly, then _HELP, HELP_ until his throat was raw and his headache was fully back. Nothing happened.

He closed his eyes, letting his head tip back against the wood and immediately straightening again with a hiss. There must be a sizeable knot on the back of his head.

Well. He was in a bathroom. If nothing else, he could get clean. He pulled himself to his feet again and stripped down, turning on the water in the tub. The knob was easy to figure out, turning one clearly labeled way for hot, the other for cold, and pulling out to send the water to the showerhead.

The warm water felt reviving. He felt like his head was clearing for the first time in a long time, and as he stood there letting it pour over his skin he realized he didn’t remember how he had gotten here. Clearly Diego had knocked him out by some method or another, but he didn’t remember encountering him at all, or the last thing he’d been doing. It wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon for Cecil, having problems with memory, but it didn’t mean he liked it or even had learned to deal with it very well.

He let the water keep running even after he’d gotten all the shampoo out of his hair and soap off his skin, out of spite as much as anything else. _Yeah, maybe you’ve got me trapped in your house and there’s nothing I can really do about it, but your utility bill is gonna be a little high this month, buddy._ Besides, he was slowly becoming more relaxed than he’d been since he’d woken up here, and he was starting to fully digest that Diego wasn’t here. Maybe he couldn’t do anything that you couldn’t do in a sparsely stocked bathroom, but for the next several hours there was no one to threaten him or hurt him or keep him on edge with borderline pleasant conversation. He was alone.

He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Eventually his fingertips began to prune, so he stepped out but left the water on, eager to avoid the silence that had reigned before he’d turned on the shower. He toweled off and regarded his dirty clothes. He supposed he could wash them in the sink, but then they would be wet. There hadn’t been a blow dryer in the cabinets he’d checked when he was trying to break out. While the idea of putting dirty clothes back on was less than desirable, the thought of hanging out in Diego and Kevin’s bathroom naked was somehow worse, so he got dressed.

That was when time really started to drag. He tried to sleep, and he might’ve even succeeded for a little while, but it didn’t last long. Or maybe it did. In any case, it wasn’t long enough. After hours of avoiding his own reflection, he gave up and took both towels off the rod, draping them over the mirror to cover it.

Most of his thoughts were not things he wanted to dwell on, as it turned out, but there was little else he could do. He wondered if Carlos had gotten home yet. He should have done by now. Cecil was almost positive of that. He wondered if he was worried, what kind of conclusions he was coming to. He wondered if Janice needed watching anytime soon. He almost wished he had eaten the bacon.

His thoughts got stuck in a loop, and he didn’t want to be thinking anymore. He wanted a distraction, any distraction. He wanted–

God, he wanted Diego to come home.

Was that why he’d locked him in the bathroom, so that his return would somehow be a positive experience? How many years long was his workday?

He turned the water off.

 

A lifetime later, his ears picked up the groan of a door opening. He stood, his heart fluttering in his chest. His only thoughts were to get out, out, to see something other than the shower curtain and the towels over the mirror. Maybe Diego would let him watch TV.

Footsteps came closer and the lock clicked. The door opened and he lost his breath; for a moment all he saw was Carlos, come to bring him home.

“I brought dinner,” he said, holding up a plastic Panda Express bag.

Cecil squeezed his eyes shut. Not Carlos. He reopened them and focused on a thin scar down the side of Diego’s neck. Carlos didn’t have that. There were other differences, but that one was easy.

He followed Diego out into the living room. Diego put the bag on the coffee table, pulling out containers. He seemed relaxed.

“Good day at work?” Cecil’s voice came out like sandpaper. He cleared his throat.

Diego shrugged. “Decent. Did the meds help?”

“Yeah.” At least until he’d screamed his headache back into existence, but he didn’t feel nauseous anymore.

“Good.” He sounded genuinely pleased. He sat on the couch and passed a bowl and a little take-out box to Cecil. “These are yours. I wasn’t sure what you would like. That drink is yours too. I hope Pepsi is okay.”

“It’s fine.” Not that it would matter if it wasn’t. He opened the bowl and the box. Eggplant tofu and fried rice. Vegetarian.

“Something wrong? You don’t like it,” Diego guessed.

Cecil realized he was just staring at the food. “No, I–” He shouldn’t be this touched that Diego had done the bare minimum by getting him something he could eat, but his voice betrayed him, thick and a little wavery. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Diego smiled faintly. It made him look more like Carlos. Cecil looked away.

“Go ahead and sit,” Diego said, and it actually sounded like a suggestion rather than an order. He picked up the remote. “Do you have a show you wanna watch? I have Netflix.”

Cecil hesitated. All of the shows he was interested in these days were ones he was watching with Carlos. “Whatever’s fine.” He sat gingerly on the other cushion.

Diego had just started scrolling through shows when a loud, pulsing buzz sounded, vibrating the couch. He pulled out his phone and Cecil remembered that other people existed. Diego had been poised to swipe to answer seemingly unthinkingly when he stopped, his posture going brittle. Cecil stared.

“I don’t know this number,” Diego said, his voice eerily calmer than anything else about him. In quick succession so that it blended into one fluid motion, he put his phone down next to him, drew the knife out from his pocket, pulled Cecil closer to himself by the shoulder, and placed the knife against his throat. “I am going to answer it. And you are not going to speak. You are not going to make any kind of sound, or I will slit your throat. Understand?”

Sick terror curled in Cecil’s gut. He was afraid that if he nodded, the blade would split the skin it was pressed against. Just his trembling alone might do the job. He thought he could already taste his own blood, and realized that it was the gash in his tongue, still unhealed.

Diego picked up the still-buzzing phone and slid his thumb across the screen. Cecil imagined himself snapping and screaming bloody murder, and immediately tried to banish the thought, terrified that just by thinking about it too hard it might accidentally happen.

“Hello?” Diego’s voice was relaxed again. The knife-wielding arm around Cecil’s shoulders stayed rigid. He listened for a moment before making a small, irritated grunt, bringing the phone away from his ear slightly. “Hold on a sec, I’m gonna put you on speaker.”

He removed the knife from Cecil’s throat and placed the phone on the coffee table. Cecil didn’t dare move. “It’s Carlos,” Diego said before hitting the speaker button.

Carlos! Cecil stared at the phone like it was manna from heaven. If it was possible to pass out from hope or emotional whiplash, he might be about to find out.

“Diego, are you there?” The sweet, beautiful voice of Carlos filled the cursed house in which they sat. It sounded tense and annoyed. “Were you listening to what I was saying?”

“I heard like half of what you said. You know I have Cecil.”

“Yes. And I want him back. In exchange for Kevin.”

Cecil’s eyes widened. He glanced at Diego to see how he was reacting to this. The man’s eyes were narrowed. “You have Kevin?”

“I do. And I’m not letting him go until you give me Cecil.”

“How do I know you even have Kevin?”

There was a short fumbling sound and then a sunny voice Cecil recognized well carried over the speaker. “Yeah, hi, Diego.”

Diego’s brows drew together, and if Cecil had to describe the expression that overtook his face then, he would choose the word longing. “Hi, baby.” His voice was quiet.

Cecil had never seen him like this, or anywhere close. Oh God, he was going to get to go home. Even if for some psychotic reason Diego didn't agree to this, and the look on his face suggested otherwise, Carlos knew he was here!

When the phone spoke again, it was back to Carlos. “I want to talk to Cecil.”

Acutely aware of the threat to his neck, Cecil stared at the side of Diego's head. The man shrugged and nodded. Cecil sagged.

“Carlos.” He was a bit mortified that it came out as a sob.

“Cecil! Honey.” Carlos’ voice had gone from stern and authoritative to soft and warm in an instant. “I'm so sorry. It's going to be okay.”

“I know.”

“I love you. So much.”

“Oh, Carlos, I love you too.”

“Alright, that’s enough.” Diego rolled his eyes.

Carlos’ voice hardened again. “So do we have a deal?”

Diego stretched, his back arching with a small pop. Just making Cecil sweat. He nodded to himself, expression resolved.

“No.”

Carlos didn’t seem to expect this. “No?” Cecil honestly wished he felt more surprise himself.

“Here’s a counter offer: I keep Cecil for fifteen days. After that I let him go. You don’t come around here before that, you don’t involve the police, secret or otherwise. I’ve been keeping Cecil alive as a courtesy, but if you break my rules, I will kill him.”

“Fifteen days?” There was no mistaking the anger in the scientist’s voice now. “What are you going to do to my fiancé for fifteen days?”

“Well,” Diego looked sidelong at him, “Cecil didn’t mention that congratulations were in order. Trouble in paradise?”

They hadn’t gone very public about it. Their close friends knew, but keeping himself from gushing about it on the radio had been one of the hardest things Cecil had ever done. “I imagine he hasn’t been feeling very chatty.” Carlos’ tone was caustic.

“Anyway,” Diego said breezily. “I think you understand my terms. Whether you keep them is up to you. Goodbye, Carlos.”

He hung up and picked up the remote, leaning back and putting on an episode of Jessica Jones. Cecil felt like his soul had gotten lost somewhere in the middle of that conversation. He didn’t move. He didn’t think he ever wanted to again.

Diego started in on his chow mein.

-

“Diego!” Carlos glared at the phone. “He’s gone.”

Kevin was slouched next to him on the couch, looking positively forlorn. “He said… no.” He seemed to not quite be able to believe it.

“I’m sure it’s not personal,” he said as if it could be anything but personal. He kind of had more pressing matters to deal with. “Kevin.”

The man looked at him despondently.

“I’m sorry,” Carlos told him. “Really. But you know Diego better than anyone. Do you think he means it? Would he kill Cecil?”

He wrinkled his nose and tipped his head from side to side, considering. “Yeah?”

Stability was fracturing and sliding away, a strike-slip fault. Carlos tried to take deep breaths. “I-I don’t know what to do, then.”

Kevin hummed, maybe in agreement, and drew his knees up to his chest. The two of them sat side by side, the phone clutched loosely in Carlos’ hand. After a long, quiet moment, he put it down on the table in front of them.

“You can… I mean, if you want, you can stay here tonight.”

He turned to him with tentatively hopeful eyes. “Really?”

Carlos shrugged. “Yeah. You can take my bed, it’s the door on the left. I’ll be fine out here.”

Kevin tried to protest and take the couch, but Carlos insisted, showing him the towels and finding him a clean pillowcase. He stood in the living room once the door was shut, staring out at the empty space blearily. It wasn’t like he was going to get any sleep tonight, anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

The markings blurred on their charcoal grey background until they were nothing but vague, hazy patches of white. Carlos blinked, his eyes refocused, and the marks became lines again, words, a few of his favorite numbers scattered in there for good measure. But just as unhelpful as they’d been a moment ago. He groaned, scrubbing his hands down his face and dropping into his desk chair. There had to be something. There had to be, there always was.

“Woah.”

He lifted his head from his hands to see Kevin standing in the doorway of his makeshift home lab, eyebrows reaching for his hairline. “What’s all this?”

Carlos sighed at his work, scribbled out on two chalkboards tacked to the wall. “Mostly nonsense, unfortunately,” he admitted.

Kevin came closer, his eyes skating over the symbols. “What do the numbers mean?”

“They just...help me.”

Kevin nodded like that made sense, rubbing at one eye drowsily. “You’ve been doing this all night?”

“I keep thinking there’s gotta be a way, a foolproof one. I’m just not seeing it.” He stood up, pacing back and forth in front of the boards. “I keep running scenarios in my mind, coming up with plots of how to get him out of there unnoticed, of using your knowledge of the layout of the house, your knowledge of Diego, but every time I start to substantiate a plan, I stop myself short, just out of…” He paused in his pacing, struggling to swallow.

“Fear?”

Carlos jerked a nod. He realized his hands were trembling and shoved them into the pockets of his lab coat. “I think our only shot is to send you. He didn’t specifically banish _you_ from the premises, and it is your house. You could maybe even talk sense into him. Where is your house, exactly?”

Kevin turned back to the chalkboards. “I’m, uh, still where you left me,” he said cheerfully, his smile a little tight.

Carlos nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of. I need to know how you got here, Kevin. The way that Cecil and I have used in the past would take much longer than we can afford.”

“Oh,” Kevin drummed his fingers on the back of the empty chair. “Funny thing. See, as soon as I decided that I wanted to leave, a door appeared on the street, and I went through it. And came out into your apartment.”

“Huh. I wondered how you got in.”

“Maybe a door like that will open for Cecil!” he suggested brightly.

“Maybe,” Carlos mumbled, doubtful. Surely he had already decided that he wanted to leave long before now. “How were you planning on getting back, if Diego agreed to the trade?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I thought another door would appear.”

“Well, maybe we can try and get one to appear now.”

“O-okay.”

He put his hands on Kevin’s shoulders and pushed him gently down into his desk chair. Kevin squeaked. “Sorry,” Carlos apologized. “Now just… try and recall how that decision felt. Focus on how you want to get back.”

Kevin was still looking at him, until Carlos raised his brows expectantly. “Oh, right.” He closed his eyes tight. Carlos waited several moments. Nothing materialized.

“Are you focusing?”

“Uh. Yes.”

“Maybe I should try too.”

“ _O_ _r_ ,” Kevin cracked an eye open, “maybe you should get some sleep. You look kind of awful, Carlos.”

“But if we can’t get a door open, we’ll have to walk all that way. We can’t drive a car into the dog park.”

“You mean _I’ll_ have to walk all that way.”

“I would go with you. Keep my distance from the house. But just walking, that could easily take us the fifteen days Diego allowed us anyway. There’s no way to really know how long it would take, time is odd in there.”

“Well, I think we should wait.”

Only when he stopped pacing did Carlos realize that he had started again. He turned to Kevin. “What?”

Kevin was looking at his hands folded in his lap. “I think we should wait the fifteen days. When Diego said ‘you don’t come around here before then,’ I don’t think he was just talking to you. I think it was more of a general you, as in, people trying to remove Cecil from the house. Plus, he knew I was sitting right there.”

“But,” Carlos frowned, “Kevin, it’s your house. He can’t–”

“He was talking to both of us.” He was sitting up straight now, his tone forceful and tinging toward frantic.

“Okay,” Carlos put his hands up. He regarded Kevin cautiously. “So… you won’t go?”

He wasn’t looking at him. “I think it’s too risky.”

Carlos wasn’t sure where this vehement resistance was coming from, but it wasn’t like he could force Kevin to do it. No matter how much he might want to. He felt like yelling and spoke gently instead. “Did something happen?”

“No.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

Kevin seemed irritated by the question, but he didn’t jump down Carlos’ throat. “Not for my own sake.”

“But for Cecil’s,” Carlos filled in with a nod. “I mean, yeah. Me too.” He chuckled hollowly. “Clearly.”

“It’s not like I care that much about Cecil,” Kevin clarified. “But you do, and the thought of being the reason that something happens to someone who means that much to you, is… not that fun.”

Carlos wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. It felt like he should be grateful, except that Kevin was using it as a reason not to help him.

“I know you’re sad,” Kevin offered, “but it’s just temporary. Think how happy you’ll be when he gets back! Even happier, because you waited for it, and you didn’t put him in danger.”

Carlos looked away. He couldn’t quite take the optimistic look on Kevin’s face right then. “Fifteen days,” he said, sagging against the board. “Do you–I mean, I know you don’t know what he’s doing, but… do you think he’s hurting him?”

Kevin shrugged, then shook his head a little. “He’s never been a sadist. More of a masochist, really.”

That was a little more than Carlos needed to know, but he tried to be comforted. He just couldn’t keep the sound of Cecil sobbing his name into the phone from echoing over and over in his head.

He closed his eyes and rubbed at them until he saw stars. _Forgive me, sweetheart._

-

Cecil had once been told that he seemed to have a fascination with the macabre. This was told to him by Carlos, back when they were just starting to get to know each other, proving that Carlos clearly did not understand journalism. Nonetheless, Cecil had to admit that he did have quite a bit of _experience_ with things people like Carlos might consider macabre, and that yes, tense and disheartening as it sometimes might have been weaving grim and ghastly tales for his listeners as they unfolded in their town, he did love his job. (Although Carlos definitely seemed more fixated on many of these events than Cecil was. Just to be perfectly objective.)

“Cecil, dinner!”

What he never realized was that sometimes the most horrifying experiences were also the most mundane.

The pain in his head had dulled into an ache that he could live with–one that sometimes he could even ignore, but just sharp enough to distract him when his musings got stuck on a dark track. He still felt dizzy when he stood, but that was manageable too. His back was pressed against cool, smooth sheets, and he let his eyes stay closed and allowed himself ten counted-out seconds before he dragged himself upright.

He left his bedroom– _no no not_ his _bedroom,_ the _bedroom_ –went down the hall, and hovered behind Diego, who was on the couch. They really needed more seating out here. Cecil hadn’t spoken a word to him since the phone call last night, eating his eggplant tofu and going straight to bed and then taking his breakfast that morning in silence. Diego had tried to coax him into conversation, but seemed only amused when it didn’t work. After spending another endless day of nothingness in the bathroom, though, what he craved even more than being spiteful towards Diego was getting some answers.

There were two plates on the coffee table, piled with some kind of pasta salad. “I hope it’s okay,” Diego said. He said that a lot for someone who constantly held all the cards. “Kevin usually does most of the cooking. All I’m certain I’m good for is bacon and eggs.”

Cecil had stopped listening, his attention captured elsewhere. The curtain over the window by the TV had been drawn back. Outside, in the dimming, warm light, he could see a sloping hill of sand dyed orange by the sunset, leading down to a road and a dotting of houses. It was the first natural light he’d seen in–since Night Vale. He walked to the window. Desert Bluffs Too, Kevin had said in an unwanted voicemail that Cecil had immediately deleted. What a stupid name.

“How did you get me here?” he asked, voicing one of the questions that had been bouncing off the walls of his brain for days.

“He speaks!” Cecil could hear the sound of utensil clinking against plate behind him. “You don’t remember?”

He shook his head. “Did you break into my apartment?”

“No. Caught you on your way to work. Chloroform.”

Cecil turned away from the window. “That’s insane. Do you realize that? That is insane behavior.”

Diego shrugged, unconcerned.

“So then what, did you drag my limp body all the way through the dog park?”

“The what?” His brows drew together. “No, I–it’s pretty easy for me to get back here. I guess because I’m from here.”

“You are?”

“Well,” Diego clarified, “not this desert specifically. I came out here to get away from the city. But I’m from this...dimension, I guess you would call it. From what Kevin has told me, he isn’t. And neither are you.”

Cecil crossed his arms over his chest. “By that logic, I should be able to get back to Night Vale easily.”

“You should,” he agreed, taking a bite of pasta salad, “except for the fact that I’ve got guards up.”

“What, you dimensional-travel-proofed the house?”

“Mhm.” Diego nodded.

Cecil narrowed his eyes, crossing back over to the couch and slumping onto the cushion next to him. “You’re really smart, aren’t you,” he groused. “Of course you would be.”

Diego smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Don’t.” He picked up his plate and turned more fully to Diego, his feet up on the couch cross-legged. “Okay, next question. Where do you sleep? Do you sleep?”

“That’s two questions, but I’ll allow it.” He pointed to a door on the opposite side of the living room from the main hallway. Cecil had never seen it opened. “I sleep in my office. Have done even before you were here. There’s a futon. Quite comfortable.”

So it seemed that Diego and Kevin had been having problems even before all of this. Although he supposed maybe some people just lived like that. He took a bite. “So I’m sleeping in Kevin’s bed.” There was a disquieting thought that was trying to creep its way into his consciousness and take root, but he shoved it back.

Diego nodded. “He hates pasta salad,” he noted almost absently, with a glance at Cecil’s plate. Cecil took another bite and wondered if he’d made the dish as a kind of ‘up yours’ to his missing boyfriend or simply because he hadn’t had the chance to have it in a while due to his partner’s distaste. Or maybe neither consideration had any factor on the decision, Diego was just making the realization now, and trying to apply logical trains of thought to someone like him was pointless.

“Next question,” Cecil said, his tone more subdued. It was one he didn’t really expect an answer to. Every time he’d asked something similar so far, Diego had changed the subject or ignored him. “What do you want from me?”

Diego stayed quiet for a moment, looking contemplative. Was he trying to form an answer or just deciding whether to tell him anything?

“I want you to relax. I want you to feel at home.”

The fine hairs on the back of Cecil’s neck rose. The words were spoken simply, maybe even earnestly, and that somehow made them all the more chilling. He struggled to get his next bite down.

“You’ve got a… hell of a way of showing that.”

“I know it’s not that realistic right _now._ ”

“What does that mean?” Cecil’s heart was beating too fast. He hated how easily Diego plucked reactions from his overtired nerves. “You gave yourself two weeks.”

There was that shrug again; careless, unbothered. Cecil wanted to shake him. “I know.”

He wasn’t hungry anymore. He forced down a few more bites and finished his glass of water before standing and bringing his dishes to the sink. The tap was already tepid when he turned it on. “I think I’m gonna head to bed.”

“Sure.”

They almost made it through the day without incident. Cecil was ready to wrap himself up in cotton sheets and try to force each group of muscles in his body to relax, one by one. He made it to the hallway when there was a knock on the front door.

He froze. Diego was on his feet in an instant. Some useless part of Cecil’s brain that held the deranged, self-destructive section of his sense of humor said, “I’ll get it.”

“Shut up!” Diego hissed. It was the most ferocity Cecil had ever heard in his voice, low in volume though it was. He pointed firmly to the bedroom and mouthed _Go._

Whoever was behind that door could be his ticket out. Diego wouldn’t hurt him in front of someone else, hopefully, and if they got him away–If he yelled for help and they had any decency…

He remembered that a bunch of former citizens of Desert Bluffs had apparently moved to the area since Cecil had been here last. Just based solely on past experience, they didn’t seem to be the most trustworthy lot. Cecil took a step back.

“Kevin? Diego?” A voice carried through the wood of the door. Cecil thought he recognized it from his vacation here with Carlos.

“Doug.” The whispered name fell from his lips before he’d realized it. Doug was a friend. Doug was strong. Cecil hesitated, his heart threatening to tumble straight out of his mouth.

A glint of metal at Diego’s hip caught his eye, but it wasn’t the steel blade he expected Diego to remind him about. It was the small, circular barrel of a pocket pistol, held at his side and pointed straight at Cecil.

Diego’s voice was barely audible, but Cecil understood every word clearly. “You better start walking that way fast if you don’t want me to put a bullet in your brain.”

Something probably important snapped inside said brain. “You won’t,” he whispered.

“What, because of him?” Diego jerked his head toward where Doug was still waiting, still knocking. “I wouldn’t even answer the door.”

And every fiber in Cecil’s body believed him, except the one operating his mouth. “You need me for something.”

Diego’s eyes were wide. His thumb cocked back the hammer. “Not that bad. _Now._ ”

Cecil felt high on all the adrenaline his body had been forced to produce over the last several days. Diego wouldn’t do it.

“Is anyone home?” Doug called.

A tremor traveled through Cecil’s frame. His skin felt pulled too tight over his skeleton, forcing all of his blood close to the surface, rushing through his veins. It would take so little to spill it out, adding to the stains he’d already left on the carpet.

He opened his mouth but found that his voice had left his body entirely. It wouldn’t have been able to push past the hammering of his heart, anyway. He would do it. Of course he would.

Cecil turned and went into the bedroom.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, he wanted to collapse onto the floor, but terror at how much sound it would make kept him upright. The bed was less than ten feet away. His legs had only pulled themselves together to function long enough to get him to safety. The carpet between his feet and the foot of the bed might as well have been an ocean.

He stood just inside the door and tried to tell himself he hadn’t just sealed his own fate. It was just two weeks. He could last two weeks. As long as he didn’t do anything to make Diego put a bullet in his head or a blade between his ribs. He’d made the right choice.

Muffled conversation could be heard through the door. Cecil made out the name “Kevin” and not much else. He rubbed at his arms and hugged his torso, reassuring himself that his skin was unbroken and his blood was all on the inside. For the most part. He touched the bandage at his temple. The edges of it were plastered down with the sweat coating his forehead.

He closed his eyes and tried desperately not to scream. Funny how the closest brushes he had with freedom were the most agonizing moments, the ones he wanted over the fastest.

By the time the front door creaked shut, Cecil had his face in his hands, concentrating on breathing and wishing Doug would leave. That was how Diego found him.

“He was asking after Kevin,” the man said. Cecil wished he and his expertly concealed weapons would just go away, too. “There hasn’t been a radio broadcast in several days. He was worried, and apparently wasn’t the only one. I told him he’s sick.”

Cecil had half expected Diego to come in and knock him out on sight for what he’d just pulled, so this was at least better than that. He lifted his head from his hands.

“What are you thinking about?” Diego asked. Cecil made a face. Telling Diego exactly what he was thinking was a lot more appealing before he’d asked for it. But maybe he owed him this, after what he'd almost gotten them into a minute ago.

“I know you don't care about me,” he said, “but Kevin? It seems like you love him, but you won't even try to get him back. Aren't you worried?”

Diego scoffed. “What do you think your scientist is going to do to him?”

“That's not really what I meant.”

“Anyway,” Diego continued, and there was something weird about his face now as his gaze lowered to the floor, “you’re wrong.”

“What?”

“I do care about you.” Cecil realized what it was. He looked hesitant, almost shy. Eyes narrowing, Cecil tried to determine if he was putting it on. He had to be putting it on, right? “I don’t want anything to happen to you, so don’t pull shit like what you just did again.”

Cecil shrank back. That was probably on the top ten list of most uncomfortable things he could have said. He cleared his throat. Better to just appease him now. “Okay.”

Diego cleared his throat too, looking a little annoyed, but Cecil got the strange sense that it might not be directed at him. “Okay,” Diego echoed, shoving his hands into his pockets. Cecil stiffened, a knee-jerk reaction at this point, but he kept his hands there. “Goodnight.”

Cecil swallowed. “Goodnight.”

Diego closed the door behind him as he left. Cecil stayed by the door for several minutes, listening to the sounds of him moving around in the living room. Eventually he heard the muted sound of some movie or TV show starting up.

He went to bed with a pit in his stomach, seeing glinting silver behind his eyelids and wishing he hated Diego more.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since posting the last chapter I've started a practicum down at my local radio station and I feel like one of Cecil's interns! Except I actually get to make broadcasts and hopefully will live through it!

The brief moment right when he woke up, when he hadn’t fully landed in his body and could have been anywhere, was the best moment of the day. Unfortunately, it was quickly followed by the worst one, when it all settled into place. He groaned, stretching out his limbs. Every muscle ached, like he had been staying too purposefully still while he slept. His mouth was at least as dry as the desert he lived in.

He lethargically pulled himself out of bed and got dressed. He’d been wearing Kevin’s clothes for the past day, he assumed, since they fit him like they were tailored. The morning before, he’d found an outfit neatly folded on the foot of his bed when he woke up, but there wasn’t one there this time, so he rifled through the closet. Kevin didn’t have a bad fashion sense, he grudgingly had to admit. Wearing his clothes still made Cecil feel a bit gross, though, bringing that nagging notion that had tried to occur to him last night threateningly close to the surface, but he managed to push it back down again. He knew that wouldn’t work for long. Undoubtedly he would be facing another maddeningly tedious day of no stimulation, and he’d have nothing to do but be slammed with every little thought that lurked beneath the surface of his conscious mind.

He tried the bedroom door once he was dressed. Locked. He pulled back the curtain over the window. The light was similar to when he’d seen it through the living room window last night, the sun low in the sky and painting the scene with warm hues. He tried to determine what that meant. Was it early? Late? Had he slept the whole day? Which way was east?

He crossed back to the door and knocked lightly on the wood. “Diego?”

There was no answer. He tried again, more loudly. “Diego!”

He thought Diego usually rose before the sun, but he wasn’t actually sure. Maybe this was his day off. Cecil hadn’t asked about his work schedule. Oh God, maybe he’d just woken him up with his yelling on his day off. He braced himself for a ball of wrath to come storming in, but nothing happened for several minutes. He let out a slow breath. Maybe he wouldn’t have cared at all. Trying to predict Diego’s reactions to things was exhausting.

He should probably just wait to be let out. After what seemed like a while, he called out more softly this time. Still no answer.

Maybe Diego wasn’t even here. Maybe he’d gone to work early today. Or maybe this was a normal time for him to be at work. Cecil still hadn’t come to any solid grasp of what was normal.

If he wasn’t here, then that meant that he’d left Cecil alone in the house, in the bedroom. Not the bathroom, like he always did. The bedroom where there was a window. 

A tingle ran down his spine, straightening his posture. Diego had said he’d dimension-travel-proofed the  _ house _ . If he could just get outside, there was a chance that one of those old oak doors would appear for him, taking him home. But if Diego  _ was  _ home, and he heard Cecil trying to break out, he’d knock Cecil’s head again at the very least. And apparently he’d been toting a pistol around this whole time too.

“Diego! Are you here?” He shouted. “Diego!” Still no answer. No sound of movement. His gaze drifted to the heavy-looking lamp on one of the nightstands. A reminder of the last time he’d considered breaking a window with a lamp flashed painfully through his skull, but Diego wasn’t here this time. By now he was almost sure of it. And his chance might disappear at any moment.

His mind and body were fully awake now just from the idea of attempting something so daring. It took him several more minutes to build up the courage to actually move. He crossed the room and unplugged the lamp, then picked it up. It was about as heavy as it looked.

“Diego!” He yelled one last time, just in case. Only silence and the pounding of his heart answered back. He took a deep breath, carried the lamp to the window, and swung.

The sharp, shattering snap as lamp met glass vibrated through his nerves. There was a bright sting of pain in his hand. His eyes had closed instinctively right before impact, and once he opened them it took him a moment to register that the pieces scattered on the carpet were what had once been a lamp, and not shards of glass. The window remained completely intact. He whimpered. What was this lamp made of?

Frustration curled his hand into a fist and he pounded on the glass once, defeated. Always defeated, no matter what he did. He’d lost his chance last night. He wasn’t going to get another one, he could feel it.

He stepped out of the pile of broken lamp and sunk into a crouch on the floor. No. He hadn’t had a chance last night. Diego would have killed him.

A shard had sunk into the skin of his palm. He was just considering pulling it out when a car door slammed outside. He fell on his butt, startled.

The front door creaked open and then closed again. Cecil sat still, waiting. It took longer than usual for Diego to come get him.

He didn't even think about moving. It was obvious what he'd been doing. Whatever Diego would do about it, he'd do. Cecil felt a sort of detached acceptance of it for the moment. At least the window hadn't actually broken.

What he didn’t expect was for the first words out of Diego’s mouth when he opened the door to be, “Oh, thank God.”

Cecil looked at him blankly, blood gathering on his palm and slowly running down to his wrist, then glanced around the room to see if there was something else going on in there to warrant such a response. But it was bare, and Diego was looking right at him.

“Uh, hi,” Cecil offered weakly. Maybe Diego was just relieved he hadn’t gotten out. He felt a bit like a child caught coloring the wall by his parent. His unhinged, wildly unpredictable parent.

“I was starting to think you weren’t gonna wake up,” Diego said, coming closer.

“What?”

“You were out so long.” Diego hugged his own torso. It made him look strangely vulnerable. “Thought that might just be it.”

“Wait.” What was he talking about? “How long?”

“Oh, going on three days now.”

“Wait _ , what _ ?” Cecil sat up straight. He hadn’t even had a frame of reference of time to be thrown from, but he fell completely off of it now.

“You must’ve been exhausted…” Diego scratched the back of his head. “That plus the concussion, I figured it must have all just caught up to you.”

Going on three days. Three  _ days. _ As disorienting as hearing that was, his body must have needed it, and at least that was a significant chunk knocked off the calendar of days spent here. No wonder he was so thirsty.

“Looks like I need to go get the bandages,” Diego said, with no more than a cursory glance at the lamp shards scattered by the window. He left and Cecil sat on the floor waiting, dumbfounded and useless.

When he came back he held a box of gauze pads, a bandage roll, and a pair of scissors. He crouched down next to Cecil and reached for his hand. Cecil pulled it away, close to his chest. “I can do it.”

Diego gave him a patient, indulgent look that Cecil didn’t care for at all, and waited. Cecil took the shard between his thumb and forefinger, winced preemptively, and pulled. He hissed as it came out. Diego took a gauze pad out of the box and held his hand out again. “I can do it,” Cecil repeated.

“You can’t bandage your own hand, come on.”

“Sure I can.”

“Cecil,” Diego pressed. Cecil didn’t like the way he said it. Exasperated, but with an undercurrent of friendliness, like they were good pals who had the charming habit of getting on each other’s nerves. He didn’t protest any more.

Diego took a tube of what was probably antibiotic cream out of the gauze box and took Cecil’s hand in his, palm up. Cecil shivered visibly at the touch, and wished he hadn’t. He hated how clearly Diego got to him. At least the man didn’t acknowledge it.

He wiped away the excess blood with one of the pads and it was all Cecil could do not to pull away. Diego hadn’t touched him without the threat or intent of harm since he had fully woken up in this house a lifetime ago, and he didn’t even want to think about the small touches during the brief, delirious time before that when Cecil had thought he was Carlos.

The cream stung as it was smoothed over his cut. “Sorry,” Diego said, even though Cecil was pretty sure he hadn’t flinched. He pictured grabbing one of the sharp shards scattered next to them and plunging it straight into Diego’s chest. His hand curled into a fist on the floor. 

Diego pressed a gauze pad to the gash and began to wrap the bandage around it. His touch was gentle, light. He wasn’t asking what Cecil had been doing, or even mentioning it. Cecil almost asked why he was being nice to him, but swallowed the question at the last second. He didn’t want to draw attention to it in case that made it stop.

“We should change out the bandage on your head, too.”

That was… well, it was true. That bandage was sweaty and starting to peel off around the edges, but he didn’t want Diego touching his face. “I can do it,” he repeated, hoping thinly that Diego would listen this time. He seemed to consider for a moment, before apparently deeming the request worthy, nodding. Arbitrary, that was the word Cecil’s mind was casting around for. Half of the decisions Diego made appeared to be entirely arbitrary, at least to him.

“Do you need a mirror? We could go in the bathroom.”

Cecil didn’t see why Diego would need to go too. And he definitely didn't need a mirror. “No.”

Diego shrugged. He handed the bandages over.

-

It was decided pretty much by default that Kevin would be staying with Carlos for the next couple weeks, since he clearly had nowhere else to go and Carlos didn’t have the heart to kick him out. Kevin stumbled out of Carlos and Cecil’s room and into the kitchen earlier than expected.

“Tonight you’re taking your room back,” he declared, slumping blearily into the dining room chair across from Carlos, his chin in his hand.

“I really don’t mind,” Carlos reminded him, taking a bite of the waffle on his plate.

“I do. Your bed has lumps.” Carlos glanced up, doubtful, but Kevin just stared him down with a quirk of his eyebrow. 

The scientist shook his head. “If you insist.”

“Ooh, was that almost a smile? And over a silly thing like getting to sleep on a lumpy bed.”

“Shh. You talk a lot.”

“You’re mad at me.”

Carlos wished he had a newspaper to pretend to be engrossed in. “No.”

“You are. You were mad at me yesterday, and you still are, so you don’t want to smile.”

That wasn’t exactly why he didn’t want to smile, but he felt a little awkward saying he felt guilty enjoying anything while Cecil was being held against his will. Even if all it was was Kevin showing a hint of human kindness.

“What's this?”

Carlos looked to see Kevin tilting back the bottle of maple syrup to peer at the label. “What?”

“Sye-rup?”

“Syrup? Have you never had maple syrup before?”

“No, and I’ve never seen you having it either.”

“Huh.” They hadn’t had it in the desert otherworld. He hadn’t thought to miss it while he was there, but once he got back he’d been excited to have it again. He’d forgotten. “I guess you’re right.” 

Kevin held the bottle high and tipped it, letting the syrup make a slow descent onto his tongue. Carlos cringed. “That’s not--”

“Woah.” A bit of syrup dribbled onto his chin as he spoke. He wiped it away and scrunched his nose at his now-sticky hand. “That is. That is sweet.”

“Yeah, you’re not really supposed to just eat it by itself.”

“Why, ‘cause it’s too much fun?” Kevin winked jauntily and tilted the bottle back again, waterfalling a spiral onto his tongue, and it was so weird, being back with him like this. Back with him and back without Cecil. Why were the circumstances that put him with Kevin always the ones that also separated him from the love of his life?

His phone buzzed in his pocket, the long, jarring kind that meant a call. He pulled it out. Steve Carlsberg. Shit.

“Who is it? Ask them if they know about maple syrup.”

“Hello?”

Steve’s friendly voice sang in his ear. “Hey, Carlos! How’s it goin?”

“It’s… How are you?” he deflected.

“Good, okay! I was just callin’ to make sure you and Cecil were still planning to come over tomorrow. I tried calling him but it kept goin’ to voicemail.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Abby got all the grocery shopping done today, and Janice is real excited! She sure does love her uncles, it’s all she’s been talkin’ about.”

Tomorrow… Oh. Oh, hell. Thanksgiving. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. “Ah, right, right. Actually, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it, Steve. I'm really sorry. I appreciate all the work Abby's been putting into this, let her and Janice know I'm really sorry too.”

“Oh, how come?”

“Cecil is…” Carlos completely blanked. He hadn’t prepared at all what he might say to other people. He hadn’t even thought of other people.

There was a light tap on his shoulder. “You okay?” Kevin's brow was crinkled in concern.

The air rushed back into Carlos’ lungs. He nodded a little. “Cecil's out of town.”

“Out of town?” Steve asked, confused. “Cecil goes out of town?”

“He's out of town, Steve.”

“Ah. I noticed he hadn’t been on the radio the past couple days but I just figured the two of you were takin’ some time off for the holiday.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Well, if you’re gonna be alone for the holiday, you’re still welcome to come over on your own. We’d love to have you.”

“Oh. Um. I wouldn’t want to put you out just for me.”

“We’re already gonna have more than enough food! And besides, we’re gonna be family soon! Practically are already.”

It was a kind offer, but it would be a bit rude to go off and have Thanksgiving dinner and leave Kevin here to fend for himself. Although if they had been expecting two guests…

“That’s very generous of you,” Carlos said, his eyes on the man who had resumed drizzling maple syrup onto his tongue. “Actually, would it be alright if I brought someone? I kind of have a houseguest.” He felt a little weird about saying it as soon as the sentence was out, what with Cecil being absent and all. Kevin looked up curiously, his tongue still poking out from his lips.

“Oh, is that so?” Steve didn’t sound scandalized, so maybe he figured if Carlos was open enough to tell him about it then there was nothing to worry about. Or maybe that was an emotion Steve Carlsberg was incapable of experiencing. “Sure, bring ‘em along! The more the merrier!”

“Great! Thank you, Steve. Really.”

“Where’re we going?” Kevin asked brightly as soon as he’d hung up.

“To Cecil’s sister’s for Thanksgiving. I’m sorry if it’s weird, I just really didn’t want to let down his niece.”

“Sounds fun! What’s Thanksgiving?”

Carlos sighed wearily, as if it was the end of a long day instead of just the beginning. “Only my least favorite holiday.”

-

Sometimes Cecil was surprised by the things he thought about when all he could do was think. More than half the time it wasn’t even about his freedom. A lot of the time it was nonsensical stories that he’d make up in his head, dialogues between people who would never exist. A lot of the time it was food, and what he might have for the next meal. A lot of the time it was Carlos, which wasn’t surprising. A lot of the time it was Diego. Which, he guessed, wasn’t either.

That nagging little thought he’d been pushing down, the one that tugged at him every morning that he put on Kevin’s clothes and every night he slept in Kevin’s bed? He’d been right in thinking that he wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever. Eventually it was all he could think about, a question pushing against his lips every time he looked at Diego, until he had no choice but to let it out or go mad with wondering.

It spilled out one evening while they were making sub sandwiches for dinner.

“Did Kevin really disappear  _ after  _ you brought me here?”

Diego didn't look up from his Italian loaf. “What?”

Cecil felt reckless, bold, fairly certain that he shouldn’t be doing this even as he was speaking, but he couldn't back out now. “I was just wondering if, maybe…” he swallowed, finishing his sentence in a rush, “he actually left first and that was why you brought me here.”

Diego paused in the spread of mayonnaise over his bread, and wow, Cecil knew the guy always kept a knife on him, but he probably should have brought this up some time when he didn't have one in hand. “So what are you saying?”

Cecil hesitated, his heart racing shallowly in his chest. “Nothing, I'm just--”

“No, say it.” He pointed his knife at Cecil, his dark brows pinched in a frown, and he clearly knew exactly what Cecil was saying. “If you're gonna be throwing around accusations, at least say it outright.”

The point of the knife trembled in his grip, smeared with mayonnaise and sharper than it really needed to be just to spread condiments. Cecil stared at it and said nothing.

Diego followed his gaze and huffed, putting the knife down flat on the counter. “I didn't think so.”

“I'm--” Cecil stopped when he realized the next word was about to be  _ sorry.  _ No, he didn't owe him that.

Diego took a few steps away from the counter, still looking agitated, his hand pulling through his hair. Cecil wanted to take it back, to take the whole thing back.

“You're nothing like Kevin, okay?” Diego told him. Cecil nodded firmly. Good that they agreed on that. “You could never hope to take his place.”

“Okay.” The way he said it, Cecil thought he believed him, but now he didn't know what to think. He'd convinced himself that was why he was here. If not that, then why?

Diego nodded, dropping his hand to his side. The house was usually only this profoundly quiet when Cecil was here by himself, but the silence stretched between them long and heavy now. He could hear himself breathe.

“Come on,” he urged him when it got to be too weird. “Finish up your sandwich.”

“No, I…” Diego shook his head. His shoulders were hunched. “I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”

“Oh.” Cecil wished for the companionable air they’d had between them a few short moments ago while they’d been putting dinner together, for Diego to lift his head and put the calm and content back in his manner. “You’re not gonna eat?”

“That’s okay, I’m not really hungry.” He just hovered there for a moment, and Cecil wondered if he was supposed to move first. Was he still allowed to eat? Diego usually shut him in his room before he went to bed himself. But then he turned and headed down the hall to Kevin’s room, the opposite direction from his office where he supposedly slept.

The door squeaked as it opened and clicked as it locked. Cecil stood at the counter dumbfounded, unsure what had just happened. He counted to ten and then twenty, and the door stayed shut. Was Diego really going to spend the night in there? What was he supposed to do?

He felt small in the big, empty space. The door continued to stay shut. His gaze drifted to the window of its own volition, but the gash still stinging under the bandage on his hand reminded him it wasn’t that easy to break out of this place. Even if Diego wouldn’t hear, which he would.

Besides, he had a sandwich to eat.

He finished making his coleslaw and swiss melt and poured himself a glass of cranapple juice. Diego’s sandwich lay on the counter, still unfinished. He had seemed hungry enough when they first started making them. Was he really so hurt by Cecil’s accusation, or was it just talk of Kevin in general that was upsetting?

He wrapped up the sandwich in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. The knife Diego had been using was still out, but Cecil didn’t know where to put that. He never kept knives in the utensil drawer, just spoons. It’d probably be fine to just leave it.

He got all the way to the couch with his sandwich before his brain caught up with itself.

There was a knife. On the counter. Diego never kept knives in the utensil drawer, because then Cecil could find them. And Diego wasn’t here. How had he seen a  _ knife _ out in the open, and his first thought was that he didn’t know where to put it away?

He rose on legs that were weak for a different reason than that first night, when he’d frantically searched for a knife while Diego was in the bathroom. Now it wasn’t the thought of an unstable stranger coming out and stabbing him that made every limb and extremity tremble, but the thought of himself actually going through with it. Taking the knife and using it against Diego. He had to take it at least, of course he had to, he would never forgive himself if he let an opportunity like this pass by. 

But. Well. He’d never actually stabbed someone before. Certainly not someone with a gun.

He wiped the blade on a dish towel and slipped it into his pocket.

None of the shows Diego usually watched were anything Cecil cared for that much, but he put one on low while he ate to try and put it out of his head. But sandwiches didn’t take that long to eat, and he could only stare at moving pixels on a screen and pretend he was thinking about anything other than the knife in his pocket for so long. His mind wouldn’t calm down but he felt fatigued, which was a bit rude considering he’d apparently woken from a nearly seventy-two hour nap only a few days ago.

Where was he supposed to sleep? Kevin’s room was out of the question. Diego’s office with the cot in it was always locked. That just left the couch he was sitting on. Well, fine with him. He didn’t feel like getting up anyway.

He dozed off in the middle of two lovers reuniting on the TV screen.


	5. Chapter 5

Carlos went to work. He didn’t know what else to do; there was no way he could sit around the house for two weeks without going insane. Whenever he’d been in the middle of highly stressful situations in the past, he’d buried himself in his work, and that usually helped. Kevin seemed perfectly content to find things to occupy his time throughout the day, so Carlos felt freed to put that out of his mind, too. Although he was pretty sure he’d be out of maple syrup by the end of the day.

Lucia greeted him with a higher level of exasperation than usual at the door to the lab. “Where have you been? Weren’t you supposed to get back from your trip days ago? I’ve been waiting for a second opinion on my interpretation of the cloud particle results forever, and these guys are morons.”

“They’re not morons.”

She shrugged. “Alright, Stan’s a moron. Still, I wanted _your_ opinion. Can you take a look before you get back to whatever you were gonna work on?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He read through her report, which was brilliant as always, and he told her so before heading toward his own work station. “Hey, welcome back, chief!” Rachelle looked up from where she was inspecting a sample under a microscope. “We had a welcome back cake ready for you on Monday, but you didn’t show, so we ate it.”

“Thanks, guys.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.”

He started setting up his space, ready to get deep in the zone and not emerge for many hours. There was a pair of earbuds he kept at work at all times for this very purpose, sometimes for music, usually to tune in to Cecil’s show and let the sound of his voice act as an anchor for him, even if he was too busy to pay attention to all of the words. He could really use some of that today.

He slipped his earbuds in, his phone already tuned to the station, and— of course.

Of course, there was nothing. Of course it was just dead air.

When Carlos was growing up, his mother was quite superstitious. He didn’t talk about it any more than he talked about the rest of his past, thinking it didn’t do much to his credit as a man of science, but it did result in some not so scientifically accurate phrases still popping into his head in certain situations even as an adult. When Carlos was sent home from school in the second grade because he couldn’t breathe on the playground and wanted to know why the other kids didn’t have any problems like that, his mom told him that sometimes a little devil would sit on his chest. Which, looking back, was a weird and alarming thing to tell a child, but at the time it just sounded silly to Carlos and made him want to find out more.

Right now, a devil was sitting on Carlos’ chest.

He pressed the palms of his hands flat on the table and could feel his hummingbird-quick pulse through them. He should get the earbuds out of his ears, the stupid earbuds that just didn’t work and that he could feel his pulse in, too, but he couldn’t get himself to move. Why couldn’t this have all hit him when he was at home, instead of here at work? The weight on his chest didn’t care about his timetable, it just settled in and made itself comfortable, and Carlos wheezed.

He needed to—he needed to yawn, or something. He couldn’t. The pressure was building in his chest, in his head, and this might be it. Cecil was being held prisoner for God knows what reason and Carlos was going to die here at the lab without ever seeing him or hearing his voice again just because he couldn’t get enough air.

“Yo, Carlos, you okay?” Rachelle’s voice was dim in his ear. He choked on a cough and felt the pressure of her hand on his shoulder. “Hey, easy. Do you have an inhaler or something somewhere? Did you breathe something in, fumes or something?”

Ah, right, actual courses of action. Carlos pointed at his bag, the front pocket.

“Oh, score!” Rachelle emerged triumphantly with the inhaler and handed it over, taking him by the hand and leading him outside. She patted his back once he’d taken a puff and was getting air through his lungs more easily. “Yikes, that was a little scary, huh?”

He nodded, his face warm. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. Good to know where that thing is. I’ve never seen anything like that happen to you before.”

It didn’t often. He hadn't needed to use that for a long time; he'd nearly forgotten he had it. He scrubbed his hands down his face and was about to rip the dumb earbuds out of his ears when suddenly, it wasn’t just dead air coming through. Carlos straightened so fast his back cracked.

“ _We're taking your calls today! We here at Night Vale Community Radio want to hear from you. What kinds of things do we want to hear, you ask, spirit of Lauren Mallard that I can never quite banish from my thoughts? Listeners, I am curious to know if any of you have ever stolen a car…”_

“Oh, no.”

“Oh no?” Rachelle was looking at him in confusion.

“Sorry, I’ve gotta go take care of something. Thank you again, so much.”

He dashed to his car and sped to the radio station. His heart was still racing and it was maybe a little unwise to be driving so soon after an attack like that, but Kevin was taking a call in his ear and he got there in record time.

The ON AIR sign was lit up outside the studio. He pushed the door open.

“Oh, it looks like we have a visitor in the studio! You all know Carlos, I'm sure! Hi, Carlos!” Kevin beamed and waved from behind the desk—Cecil’s desk. “Would you like to talk to our caller?”

Carlos went up to the soundboard and turned off the mic.

“Hey, what're you—”

“End the broadcast. Come with me.”

“That's a pretty abrupt way to end it, we had a caller on the line!”

“You can't—you're not supposed to be here—”

“Woah, woah, okay,” Kevin pressed a button on the board and put his hands up, eyeing Carlos warily. “I’m going.”

Carlos turned on his heel and Kevin followed him out. “You can’t just waltz into somebody else’s station and make broadcasts! And what are you doing asking people how to steal a car?”

“I’m not asking people _how_ to steal a car, I’m asking for _stories_. It’s just a topic of conversation.” Kevin shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the outside wall once they got out into fresh air. “But they didn’t want to talk about that, I guess. I think they thought I might be trying to take over the town.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you commandeer a community news source without asking, especially with your track record!”

Kevin ducked his head. “You're mad. I should've known you'd be mad, I just thought…”

“What? What exactly were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that Night Vale had been missing out on their community radio, and that was something I could do.”

Carlos crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s not your place.”

Kevin rolled his eyes, lifting his gaze to meet Carlos’ again. “Okay, well that may be so, but I’ve known you for a long time and I don’t remember you ever using this kind of tone with me, so I’m guessing there’s something else going on too.”

Carlos took a slow, deep breath. His heart still seemed to think it was a racehorse, the jarring radio silence from the earbuds still left him feeling like there was a stone in his gut even though he knew that was scientifically not the case. He turned away. “I might as well feed Khoshekh while I’m here. You wait outside.”

“Who?”

“The station cat.”

Kevin’s whole demeanor brightened. “Oh, right, there’s a cat!”

Carlos sighed. There was no way he was going back into that building alone, was there? “…Do you want to come with me?"

—

A chill was seeping in through Cecil's clothes. There was something hard against his back, something unyielding. His neck was bent at an awkward angle.

He pulled all his limbs together and sat up, blinking around at the darkness. Darker than any room with a window probably would ever be. He reached out and felt around. Cool, smooth, curved, hard.

He was in the bathtub. Fully clothed. That was a relief, at least. It wasn't where he'd fallen asleep, but somehow he was finding it difficult to be too surprised.

When he moved, something poked at his thigh. He patted at his pocket and felt the shape of the knife he'd swiped last night. His mouth went dry. Diego had moved him, apparently, and hadn't found the knife on him. God, what if he had found the knife?

Just imagining that scenario woke him up the rest of the way. He stumbled out of the tub and felt his way through the room until he found the light switch, then immediately made his own eyes water by forgetting to squint when he turned it on.

One of the bulbs above the mirror was making a faint, high buzzing sound. Cecil pulled a towel over the mirror and hopped up on the counter. Apparently Diego only trusted him to stay in Kevin's room unsupervised when he'd thought he'd gone into a coma.

He yawned and began to occupy himself by making little doodles on the counter with an eyeliner pencil. He'd never seen Diego wearing eyeliner, so either he just pulled it out for special occasions or it was Kevin's.  Cecil had filled up about half of the countertop the last time he was in here, so he wiped it down with a damp washcloth and started over.

Diego would look pretty hot in eyeliner. He considered feeling guilty about that thought, but why bother? Diego looked a lot like Carlos, and Carlos would undoubtedly be hot with some eyeliner. If he wanted to wear it.

The pencil was pretty dull at this point, and there wasn't a sharpener. He doodled a small cartoon of Carlos as a rocker, hair in his face and sporting a studded jacket. He tried to thicken up the line under his eyes but it was a little hard to tell what he was going for since the whole thing was drawn with a dull pencil.

It looked more like something Diego might wear.

He doodled a fat cat hovering above his head, then a crew of bank robbers breaking into a vault.

The hardest part about these hours of solitude was that he never had any idea when they would end. If he knew that, he might be able to enjoy them more. Because really, they weren’t that bad, objectively speaking. He was free to get lost in his daydreams, and things had really turned around for the better when he’d found the eyeliner pencil last time.

Besides, who knew what would happen when Diego got home? He hadn’t been in the best of moods the last time they had spoken, and Cecil still wasn’t sure if Diego was upset with him personally or not. Better to enjoy the moments of peace while he could.

That mindset dissolved about forty doodles later. He wanted out. The floor tiles had faint swirly shapes on them, and Cecil’s eyes drifted automatically to the ones he’d already stared at for hours on end. There was one that looked like a llama, and one near it that vaguely looked like a dude pointing a spear in the llama’s direction. A few feet away was a cluster that could be a sad woman’s face. Cecil imagined it was her pet llama, and she feared for his safety.

He was starting to get hungry. What if Diego was mad at him for accusing him of trying to replace Kevin, and didn’t bring him anything? He’d never denied him food before, but any and all reactions from Diego seemed not only possible, but plausible.

He drifted back to sleep with his back against the mirror and his legs dangling from the edge of the counter, dreamt that Diego was diagnosed with a degenerative disease that confined him to his bed, and woke up sore and starving. He shook out his limbs as if shaking off the dream. It was one of those ones that left behind a heavy, unsettled feeling even after waking.

What if Diego… wasn’t coming back? What if he didn’t want to see Cecil after last night?

But no, it would be his house he would be coming back to, not just Cecil. Surely he would be coming back. Where else would he go? Obviously he would come back. Cecil was just being paranoid.

He stood on the counter and unscrewed the lightbulb making that awful high pitched sound.

—

“Oh my God. He’s so cute!”

Kevin was practically buzzing with excitement, bouncing on his toes around Khoshekh. “Can I pet him?”

“Sure. He doesn’t move much, but he's friendly enough.”

“I love him.” Khoshekh closed his eyes in contentment as Kevin reached out a hand to pet him, just grazing the tips of his fur with his fingers as if he was afraid to disturb him too much. “I love you, Khoshekh.”

Carlos watched, a small smile on his face. It was harder to stay upset with him when he acted like an excitable little kid. “You should get a cat.”

“I _should_ get a cat!”

He let Kevin keep petting and cooing for a few more minutes, but he was getting a bit antsy. He should really get back to work. There was something he had to do before he could do that, though.

“Hey, Kevin… could you do me a favor?”

Kevin straightened, his eyes bright and eager. "Anything." Carlos had to look away from that gaze. _Sure, anything but help me get my fiancé out of your house._

“Could you call Diego for me?”

Kevin cocked his head. "Really?"

"I just need to hear Cecil's voice. Or at least try."

"Ah." Kevin shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded, gaze dropping to his shoes. "Yeah, of course!" He pulled out his phone.

It rang, the sound loud enough for Carlos to hear with the bathroom acoustics. Once, twice, six times and then a click. Kevin’s brow was pulled in a frown, but it smoothed once he registered that Carlos was watching him. “I’ll try again!”

This time it only rang twice before the click. It wasn’t going to voicemail. Diego must be actively rejecting the call. “It’s okay,” Carlos said quickly, seeing Kevin valiantly endeavoring to keep his expression optimistic, but his own bubble of hope had deflated too.

“He must be busy.” Kevin shrugged. When he had positively wilted from the inside out after Diego rejected Carlos’ offer of Kevin as a bargaining chip over the phone, Carlos had thought that he must have gotten better at expressing negative emotions than the last time he’d seen him, but it seemed that he was still having trouble with it. Not that Carlos was really one to talk.

“Kevin…” he started.

“What?” The man had resumed petting Khoshekh, although with considerably less enthusiasm than before.

“Do you know what that’s about?”

“What what’s about?”

Carlos shrugged, feeling the delicacy of the subject like an eggshell in his palm. “Why he’s ignoring your calls. Why he abducted Cecil, and why he told you he was going to. All of it.”

Kevin stopped petting the cat, folding his arms over his chest. “You asked me some of that before.”

“Yeah, and you said he might be trying to take over Night Vale, which I really don’t know how he could accomplish by kidnapping one person.”

"Does it matter? The reason doesn't change the facts."

It wasn’t a total denial of any knowledge this time, and Carlos jumped on it. This was an eggshell that needed to be cracked. “So you do know?”

“I don't know details.” Kevin wasn't meeting his eye anymore. “Do I know why he isn't talking to me? Maybe, but that's private."

"Kevin—"

"Dont worry about it, okay? It doesn't matter."

Carlos had hit a wall. He wanted to shake Kevin, to make him spill what he knew, because he couldn't imagine that it didn't matter. Anything that was going through Diego’s head, anything at all, would be nice to know. He jerked his head toward the door, his tone terse when he spoke. "Just go home, okay? I think you've caused enough municipal alarm for one day."

For some reason that made Kevin's eyes go wide; he looked a bit hurt. What was that about? Carlos wasn't saying anything he didn't already know. "Home? Carlos, I—I'm not wanted back there, Diego's made that abundantly clear—"

“Oh, no, I mean—I meant my home, my apartment.”

“Oh.” The hurt was gone, softening into a hint of a sparkle in his eye. “Okay. I’ll go...home.”

“Don’t turn this into something it’s not, I just meant the apartment where we’re both currently living.”

“Yeah, I got it. See you at home!” Kevin was fully cheerful again, and gave Carlos a wink on his way out the door.

Carlos rolled his eyes and wondered what his chances were of getting anything meaningful done today.

—

There was a tendency to get a bit melodramatic when locked in a bathroom indefinitely. Cecil would often become convinced that he’d been in there for days, weeks, that this was his life now and there would be no end to it, ever.

But this time… this time he didn’t think he was being dramatic. He’d taken two showers, had filled the countertop with scribbles twice, had sang every campfire song he could remember from Scouts and he was fully convinced that Diego had been gone for actual, multiple days. He was starving. He was weak and shaky and had a headache and whatever other notions flitted through his mind, it always came back to food.

Once the eyeliner pencil had become too dull to make a mark, he’d remembered the knife in his pocket and whittled it down to a point again. Unfortunately eyeliner was not edible. Neither was toothpaste, or soap, or shampoo.

Diego must really hate him now. He’d been left to starve. He missed conversation, and Diego’s weird, dark TV shows, and his confusing behavior, and the way he brought home food. Or what if he hadn't abandoned him on purpose, and was hurt somewhere? Or dead?

Cecil's knife might've been sharper than an average butter knife, but it didn't do much in the way of cutting through wood or getting a door off its ridiculously stubborn, almost definitely tampered-with hinges. He'd managed to make a few splinters with it, and if he really needed to, he might be able to get through with some seriously dedicated hours. The way things were going, it looked like he might have to.

For a long time the things he would yell at Diego if he ever got home ran on a loop in his head. How long have you been gone, where have you been, why didn't you come for me. But when it finally happened, he couldn't bring himself to say any of it. The door opened, and he collapsed into Diego.

"Woah!" Diego wrapped his arms around him so they were sort of awkwardly embracing, and maybe that had kind of been what Cecil was going for originally, he wasn't sure. He was distracted by a large plastic bag on the counter.

"Food?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah." Diego set Cecil upright and gestured toward the bag. "Have as much as you want."

Cecil was on it in an instant. There were two pizza boxes inside. He tore into the top one, and it was only when he’d eaten about a slice and a half that he allowed himself a moment to try and get more words out. “Diego—what—”

“Crazy long day at work.”

Cecil actually paused in his chewing to stare at him. “ _Day_?”

“Okay, so it’s been a little while. We got swamped, I had to stay.”

“To do scheduling?” Cecil wasn’t understanding.

Diego shrugged. “Yeah, among other things. I coordinate a lot of what everyone else is doing. There was a crisis and it just got really hectic.”

“How long have you been gone?”

“I—” he winced. “I guess I left early yesterday.”

Cecil glared at him and continued to eat his pizza in silence.

“I’m sorry…” Diego hopped up on a barstool and dropped his chin into his hands. He really did look exhausted, his hair a mess and his eyes a little red.

"Your job sucks," Cecil declared. Diego just grunted in what might have been agreement.

“Speaking of how long,” Cecil leaned his elbows on the counter. “Where are we on my fifteen days?”

Diego’s gaze shifted away, his lips a thin line. “Cecil…”

Well, that couldn’t mean anything good. “What?”

“You’ve been here for like two and a half weeks.”

Two and a half weeks. No… “So that’s…”

There was something like an apology in Diego’s eyes when he looked up again. Cecil’s stomach sank fast.

“Cecil, it’s been seventeen days.”

—

“How’s this? Is this the kind of thing you wear to Thanksgiving?”

“It’s...fine. You look good.” He looked really good, actually, but he didn’t need that much of an ego boost. Kevin was wearing Cecil’s clothes, which of course was the logical choice since they fit him best, but it was still a bit hard to see them on him. They were some of Cecil’s favorites.

“Thanks!” Kevin preened, but he scrunched up his nose when he caught his reflection in the mirror. “Cecil’s clothes are kind of super weird.”

“Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Kevin followed him out of the bedroom. “Hey, I know you didn’t ask, but you look great. Showstopping.”

“Thanks, Kevin.”

“Seriously, are you even trying right now? I feel like you never are, and you always look amazing.”

Carlos glanced down at his clothes as he grabbed his keys, his face a bit warm. He had on his nice dress pants and a green button-down. “I mean, I’m trying a little. It is Thanksgiving, after all.”

“Right, your favorite holiday.”

Carlos shoved him on the shoulder on his way out the door. Kevin cackled.

The ride over to the Carlsberg-Palmer house was quiet, and Carlos got the sense that Kevin might be a little anxious. He was starting to wonder if this might’ve been a bad idea. Kevin wasn’t exactly well-liked in this town, and he probably should have told Cecil’s family who he was bringing and checked to make sure it was okay first.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he tried to reassure Kevin and probably himself too once they were parked in the driveway. “They’re like, the nicest people I know.”

Kevin nodded. “Yeah, we’ve actually met.”

“Oh, you have?” Kevin opened his door instead of responding, so Carlos just scrambled out behind him and onto the porch.

Abby greeted them cheerfully at the front door. “So you must be Carlos’ friend?” She extended her hand to shake. “Wow, your face looks a lot like Cecil’s.”

“So I’ve heard. I’m Kevin.” He beamed and shook her hand. It definitely didn’t seem to Carlos like they’d met before. “Yours kind of does too, but in a more girly way!”

Abby laughed. “Come in, come in!”

“Actually,” Kevin said, and Carlos just stood there stupidly while he completely took the reins on this interaction, “before we do, would it be alright if I spoke to your husband for a minute?”

“Oh!” Abby’s eyebrows raised and she glanced back into the house. “Sure. Steve! Could you come out here a minute?”

As soon as Steve appeared and his eyes locked onto Kevin’s face, Carlos could see this had been a mistake. Steve’s features looked like they’d been turned to stone, as if he was trying with everything he had not to make any expression at all.

“Carlos, this is your friend?”

Before Carlos could do more than open his mouth, Kevin jumped in. “Before I even think about accepting your wife’s gracious invitation into your home, I need to apologize. What I said all that time ago—implying that your daughter needed to be fixed—”

Woah, what?

“You didn’t imply it, you outright said she did.”

“Right, of course—saying that your daughter needed to be fixed, that was uncalled for. And not okay.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s right.”

“I’d apologize to Janice too, but I assume you never told her what I said, so that would probably just do more damage than good.”

Kevin had said that Janice needed to be fixed? No wonder Steve was looking at him like that; Carlos had never seen Steve look at anyone like that. “Look, I didn’t realize there was such a personal conflict here,” Carlos said, “otherwise I wouldn’t’ve… I didn’t mean to cause…”

Kevin gave him a little reassuring look, and he really did seem to be handling it, so Carlos shut up. Kevin turned back to Steve. “Unlike most of the town, Carlos has the advantage of not really knowing me back then, which is probably the only reason he can stand me.”

Steve didn’t move to let them in. “You caused a lot of hurt in this town. You and that StrexCorp.”

Carlos thought he saw Kevin flinch the tiniest bit at the name, but he maintained his composure. “Yes. I did.”

After a long moment of appraisal, the corners of Steve’s mouth twitched up. “Aw, what the hell. I trust Carlos as a judge of character, and you do seem pretty different than I remember. Come on in, fellas. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Carlos followed the two of them inside a bit dumbfounded. There were a lot of positive words he could use to describe Kevin, but _tactful_ and _mature_ had never been among them.

“Hi Uncle Carlos, happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey Janice, you too!” He thought about doing something affectionate like ruffling her hair, but remembered that he always hated when adults did that to him as a kid, so he kept his hands in his pockets.

Janice grinned. “Hello Uncle Carlos’ friend, you look really cool.”

“Thank you! Your headband looks really painful.” Ah, there it was. That was the level of tact Carlos remembered. Janice giggled.

“It’s too bad Cecil couldn’t join us!” Abby called from the kitchen. Kevin leaned over to whisper in Carlos’ ear.

“She’s still a child. Do people not age here?”

“No, yeah, it surprised me too when—” he cut himself off, looking at Kevin sharply. _What?_ Kevin mouthed.

“When I got back from the desert otherworld.” Oh, he was stupid. He was so, so dangerously stupid. _Time is odd in there_ , isn’t that what he’d said to Kevin not two days ago?

“Uncle Carlos, where did Uncle Cecil go?”

“We have to go,” Carlos said, a sour taste in his mouth. He felt lightheaded.

The smile on Kevin’s face was stiff, the expression of someone who had done all he could on his part to make sure this was a pleasant, successful dinner. "What are you talking about, Carlos? Where do we have to go?”

“The dog park.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to get this chapter and the next one out fairly close together, since the next one is shaping up to be kinda short, so expect another update next week or shortly after. Thank you all for your continued support and your thoughts on this fic, I love reading them and you guys are awesome!

“You’re lying.”

The world was tilting somehow without anything actually moving.

“I’m not lying.”

Cecil put down his slice of pizza instead of letting it continue to tremble in the air. "Then why haven’t you let me go? You said fifteen days, and then you’d let me go.”

“I assumed,” Diego said calmly, “that when I told your fiancé not to come around here for the fifteen days, that after the fifteen days were over, he would be here to pick you up.” He glanced around as if looking for him, then shrugged. “But he’s not. And it’s a vast, dangerous desert out there. I wouldn’t want to just send you off by yourself.”

“You can send me off by myself, I don’t care.”

“I’m not going to do that, Cecil.”

“You said,” Cecil’s fists were balls of tension on the countertop, and his voice was too loud. “You said fifteen days and you’d let me go, that’s what you said!”

“Cecil, calm down.”

The knife felt heavier than ever in his pocket. He could slip it out and lunge across the counter, probably before Diego could pull out his own.

He didn’t reach for it. Diego's refusal to let him go wasn’t really why he felt close to splitting at the seams. It was just…

Carlos _wasn’t_ there.

So he calmed down. He unclenched his fists, pushed his barstool away from the counter, and went to Kevin’s room.

“Cecil!” He heard Diego call from the kitchen. Cecil closed the door.

There was a strange hollowness in his chest where he thought he really ought to be feeling a lot. Or maybe that’s what the feeling was. A lack. Everything scraped out with a knife, like a pumpkin. He was supposed to be getting married relatively soon, and Carlos wasn’t there. He laid on top of the covers, curled on his side.

He didn’t open the bedroom door again until the next morning, to walk into the kitchen and ask, “Was it seventeen days I’ve been here total, or seventeen since Carlos called?”

“Won’t you sit down? I didn’t make anything for breakfast, but there’s a ton of leftover pizza.”

“Diego.”

The man sighed. “Seventeen since Carlos called.”

Diego was clearly about to go to work, so Cecil went ahead and shut himself in the bathroom. He didn’t notice if there was the sound of a lock clicking before the front door opened and closed. He didn’t try the knob to check.

-

“We are not doing this.”

After apologizing profusely to the Carlsberg-Palmers and leaving them more confused than ever (except for Janice, who was satisfied by Carlos’ assurance that he was going to go get her uncle), Carlos had practically dragged Kevin out of the house by his ear.

“I, at least, am doing this. Whether you want to come along is up to you.”

Kevin pursed his lips, considering. “Can I stay in your apartment while you’re gone?”

“And then what would you do? Once I get back with Cecil?"

“Be the best man at your wedding?” he asked hopefully.

“Kevin, you don’t want to be the best man at my wedding," he waved him off. "I already asked Lucia, anyway.”

Kevin closed his mouth, but it looked like he still wanted to argue. Carlos sighed. “Look. I’m not saying you have to go back and patch things up with Diego. I think that would actually be a bad idea. But Kevin, that town is still your home. You poured so much into that community.”

The way Kevin bounced on the balls of his feet seemed anxious. “What’s the sudden urgency? We’re still supposed to be waiting.”

“No, listen, okay.” He grasped Kevin’s shoulders. “You know how Janice is still a child? Time goes way slower here than it does in your town. I can’t believe I didn’t think to factor that in, you ought to revoke my license as a scientist.”

“You have a license?”

“I don’t know exactly the geographical point where time starts to behave differently, or if it’s more of a graduated thing, but from what I’ve been able to observe, at least in the heart of town it’s approximately ten times faster than here. Which makes it likely that Cecil has already been there for—” his stomach felt sick as he said it, his voice significantly subdued. “Thirty to forty days. That’s over a month, Kevin.”

“Oh.” Kevin had been holding very still ever since Carlos had grabbed his shoulders. It doubled as a way to try and get Kevin to take this seriously, but really Carlos mainly needed the stability right now.

“It could be well over a month, since I don’t know exactly how long he was gone before I got back from my trip.” He’d had his share of oversights in his line of work before, disastrous ones even, but this... Cecil trusted him to be brilliant, to think of everything, and he’d let him down so hard Carlos was having trouble even fully processing it.

Something had shifted in Kevin’s expression, and it looked a bit like resignation. “Well then what are we doing standing around here talking?”

-

“If you want to talk… I’m here. Just. Just thought I’d let you know that. Okay.”

Footsteps receded from the door. Cecil pressed his eyes harder into the pillow. His mouth was dry and his clothes were starting to itch. He should probably get up and change them.

He didn’t want to talk. What would he talk to Diego about? The gnawing worry that Carlos had gotten caught in a sandstorm and was buried in a drift somewhere? The fear that Carlos had never left Night Vale at all, that he just didn’t care that much to get Cecil back? The raw, aching guilt when he found himself occasionally almost hoping it was the first one?

Even if he wanted to talk about any of that, he couldn’t do it with Diego. If there was any possibility of Diego understanding even a fraction of that, he would have let Cecil go, or at least told him why he was there.

Maybe Diego had intercepted Carlos before he could get to the house and killed him.

He pulled himself up off the bed to escape that thought and padded over to the closet. It hardly mattered what he wore, but he rifled through the hanging clothes anyway, too listless to make even a trivial decision. There was a black shirt with neon pink trim. The bright pop of color caught his eye, so it might as well be that one. As he started to take it off the hanger though, the trim separated from the shirt, and he realized it belonged to a different shirt that had gotten double hanged underneath it. He pulled the black shirt off the hanger, revealing a magenta short-sleeve underneath, with a neon pink collar.

 _His_ magenta short-sleeved shirt with the neon pink collar. This was what he’d been wearing that last day in Night Vale when he’d been brought here. He skimmed his fingers over the fabric. Just as silky soft as when he’d put it on, and quite a bit softer than it had been by the time he’d finally taken it off.

He pushed all the shirts to one side of the rod and searched through the pants hangers. Sure enough, at the very back were his sunset orange harem pants. He pulled them out and laid the shirt and the pants both out on the bed.

They looked like home. They looked like him.

He folded them up and shoved them to the back of the closet before he put on the black shirt and the first pair of pants he could find, mustard yellow.

-

The gate to the dog park was closed as usual, but it was easy enough to scale it. The two of them kept their heads down for the first bit of the trek until the grass thinned and gave way to sand. Kevin carried a backpack that hopefully held enough rations for a few days’ journey and a bottle of wine that Carlos had forgotten to actually hand to Abby, and Carlos had the pack that Cecil used on his occasional stint as a scoutmaster. Overall he felt pretty well equipped, and was actually feeling fairly optimistic.

That is, until the sun had been beating down on them for what his timepiece recorded as four and a half hours, though he knew he couldn’t trust it. Not being able to trust a device whose entire purpose was to measure what should have been an unyielding, objective fact like time was one of the most frustrating and disheartening aspects of existence in places like this. Scientifically interesting, yes, but also very unhelpful at the moment. Once all this was over he would have to come back and do a definitive study on the gradation of time and map it all out, but under the circumstances he had a few more pressing things to worry about. Besides, he’d have to coordinate with his team back in Night Vale to act as a control, although the idea of using Night Vale as a control group in any study was ludicrous at best. In any case, he was already too far into the desert to do that now.

The sun really should have been getting closer to setting by now, but it wasn’t. He wiped his brow with an already-soaked rag. “Do you think Diego will keep his deal? That he’ll let him go?”

Kevin shrugged, kicking a rock in front of his feet. He’d been kicking the same rock and managing to keep track of it for quite some time now. It was kind of impressive, really, especially considering all the sand. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“He very well could be lying, Carlos. Is that what you want to hear?”

Carlos stirred up a puff of sand with the toe of his shoe. “Sounds like a real keeper,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I said he sounds like a keeper,” he repeated more loudly.

Kevin gave him a sour look. “I’m pretty sure you’ve given up your right to judge who I’m with.”

“Oh, have I?” Carlos asked, eyebrows raised. “I think now that he’s abducted my boyfriend, excuse me, my fiancé, I maybe have a little bit of a right to judge!”

“Whatever. You don’t even know him.”

“I think maybe, just maybe, I know enough.” He adjusted the pack on his back. “In any case, we’ll just have to make him keep up his end of the deal.” His confidence in the plan was waning a bit. They were pretty well equipped for a journey, but much less equipped if Diego wanted to put up a fight. They had no weapons, and Carlos was hardly a fighter. He knew Kevin had a… history of violence, but it wasn’t exactly something Carlos wanted to encourage, and besides, he kind of doubted he’d be able to convince him to turn on his boyfriend, no matter what their strange situation might be. Still, like hell was he about to give up.

“I’m going to call him,” he declared.

“He’s not answering, remember?”

“He’s not answering _you_ ,” he pointed out. “No offense, but if he’s mad at you for some reason, then there’s still a possibility that he would answer me, especially if he never saved my number.”

The next kick to Kevin’s rock was particularly vicious. “I guess.”

Carlos dialed, not expecting much. It stopped ringing after two. “Hello?” the voice on the line answered.

His mouth fell open and his eyes met Kevin’s. He cleared his throat. “I just wanted to make sure you’re still planning on keeping up your end of our deal," he said. Kevin huffed and looked away.

“Ah. Carlos.” Diego’s voice was quieter now, like he didn’t want to be overheard. “I gotta say, you’re running a little late.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Although I’m not sure how possible it actually would be to have gotten there on time. Answer the question.”

“The deal stands, of course. We’re just waiting for you. Or I am, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Cecil gave up on you a while ago.”

Carlos’ jaw clenched. He was just trying to bait him. He took a deep breath and pretended that probably wasn't true. “Let me talk to him.”

“I don’t think so.”

"Come on, you could listen in the whole time. I just want to hear his voice."

"You're misunderstanding," Diego said coolly. "Cecil doesn't want to talk to you."

Carlos snorted. "Sure he does."

"No, he doesn't even know who you are. It would just confuse him."

He closed his eyes, shaking his head. "What are you talking about?"

"This is what he chose, Carlos." He could almost hear the shrug in his voice. "I don't know what else to tell you."

He was starting to lose patience with this act. "This isn't what he _chose_ , none of this is. Forgive me if I don't exactly believe you. And if you really are trying to take over Night Vale, I gotta say, this is a strange way of doing it."

"Take over Night Vale?" There was a sharp laugh in his ear. "Is that what Kevin told you I was doing?"

"So you're not?" Carlos kind of had the feeling that Kevin had either been lying about that one or just taking a shot in the dark.

“No, my dear, dear Carlos,” Diego said. “I'm afraid this is much more personal than that. And much more selfish.”

“How could it be personal?” He didn’t like the sound of that. He swallowed. “Do you know Cecil? What are you doing?”

“I guess you’ll see when you get here, won’t you? If that’s all you had to say, I think we’re done here.”

“No—”

“Goodbye, Carlos. Hope to see you soon.”

The line clicked and went dead. He yanked the phone away from his ear in frustration. "You're right, he seems like a great guy."

"Mm." Kevin was walking with his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets. The rock he'd been kicking was nowhere to be found. Carlos sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” Kevin lifted his head, holding it high. “This is actually a good thing, that it's just me. See, the sooner he stops talking to me, the sooner I can stop thinking about him and he can stop thinking about me, and the sooner he can find someone better and move on with his life.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Carlos mumbled. “You don’t have to try and be happy about this.”

“Sure beats being sad about it.”

“Does it?”

Kevin was quiet for a moment, then looked up and over at him across the sand with a grateful little smile. “No.”

-

He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d spoken, but several nights and even more meals had come and gone. He got into the habit of eating whatever food he was offered in silence and retreating back to his room straight after. Diego still tried to talk to him sometimes, but the attempts were getting fewer and farther between.

“It’ll get better, y’know,” Diego said over dinner one night as if he had any idea what he was talking about. Cecil didn’t look up from his soup, and Diego didn’t add anything to that.

Diego finished his soup first. He waited until Cecil was done and then offered to rinse out his bowl. “I think I’m gonna watch a movie out here if you want to join me,” he said at the sink, steam rising from the hot water. After the dishes were dried and put on the rack he went to the couch and started flipping through Netflix.

Cecil still sat at the bar. The autopilot in his legs wanted to slide off the stool and head straight for his room, but he didn’t move just yet. It wasn’t the only night Diego had been watching a movie or a show in the living room while Cecil laid numb in his bedroom, but now he thought maybe it would be better, actually, to stay out here. Having a movie on would make it easier not to think.

He stood and walked to the living room, sitting down next to Diego. The man looked surprised but pleased and didn’t say anything. Clearly he had assumed that Cecil would just go to his room, that he would reject his offer, and yet he had made the offer anyway.

The movie started and Cecil laid down on the couch, his legs curled up and the top of his head brushing up against Diego’s thigh. The people on the screen started causing their own petty problems, and it had nothing to do with Cecil. It was nice.

About halfway through the film he felt a hand skim through his hair. He didn’t flinch. The hand disappeared and Cecil tried not to breathe. After a moment of hesitation it returned, short blunt nails scratching lightly over his scalp in a slow, repetitive motion. And that was nice, too.

The next evening he had little choice but to break his silence. He was washing his hands in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, when the pipe under the sink sprung a leak, spraying water out in a thin but powerful stream. He cursed, shutting off the tap, but the water kept coming. He grabbed a cup off the counter and held it against the stream, but that was going to fill up fast.

“Diego!”

There was no response. He was in his office. Cecil muttered under his breath and gave up on the cup, crossing the house to knock on the door to the office.

"Uh, Diego, the pipe under the bathroom sink burst a leak or something and I don't know where to turn off the water."

There was a muffled sound of movement behind the door and then it opened. Diego had a phone to his ear. "It looks like I have a bit of a plumbing emergency, I'll call you back, alright? Okay." He hung up. "It's on the outside of the house," he said to Cecil, brushing quickly past him. "Hold on, I'll get it."

"Okay!"

Cecil bounced on his toes in the doorway, watching him go. He probably should have gone and tried to find some other way to collect the water, but at that moment he realized that he was standing in the open doorway of Diego's office. This could very well be his only chance to see inside.

There was a desk where Diego had probably just been sitting, with various papers scattered across it, a laptop computer open, and a bulletin board on the wall above with still more papers pinned to it. On the other side of the room there was an audio console, mic, and headphones, and the far wall was taken up by a low cot. Cecil scanned the recording equipment with interest before skimming the contents of the bulletin board. There weren't that many for the size of the board; there was quite a bit of open space and empty push-pins. He saw a couple of certificates that seemed to be recognitions from Diego's work and a cluster of five or six sheets that looked like handwritten letters. He stepped closer to these, curious.

As soon as he saw the first scrawled salutation his stomach dropped.

_Dearest Carlos._

Cecil's eyes jumped from letter to letter to see how the others were addressed. They were all along that same theme.

_Brilliant Carlos,_

_Beautiful Carlos,_

_Carlos._

He felt like he'd been clubbed in the head again. A single line jumped out in the first letter he’d seen.

_It’s like I’ve found the other part of me. Only better than me. Much, much better._

“What are you doing?”

Cecil jumped a few inches in his skin. “I—”

Diego’s face was all harsh angles, etched from stone. “Get away from those. Get out of my office.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Get out!”

Cecil shuffled past him, his head down. “And there’s gonna be no water until I look at that pipe in the morning,” Diego added.

“Okay.”

The door to the office slammed shut. Cecil stood alone in the living room, stunned.

Diego was in love with Carlos. Or obsessed with him, at the very least.

How did he even know Carlos? Cecil knew there was a lot about Carlos’ past he didn’t know about, but he hadn’t given too much thought about that in a while. After all, there was quite a bit Carlos didn’t know about Cecil’s past, too. Granted, most of that was stuff Cecil didn’t know himself, but who was keeping track?

What if Carlos had liked Diego back at some point? He shuddered at the thought. That would be like if Cecil were interested in Kevin, only maybe even weirder since he knew Carlos and Diego both were in the habit of looking in mirrors. Was it some sort of narcissistic thing?

But if the letters were still in Diego's possession, then either he'd never sent them or they had been given back to him. Carlos might not even know of his affections.

What if… oh God, was that why he was here? Because he was with Carlos? If Diego got Cecil out of the way, then he could have Carlos all to himself.

But if all he wanted was to get rid of Cecil, there were much more effective ways than holding him indefinitely in his home. Especially since Diego continued to live in said home, an entire dimension away from Carlos.

Or maybe they were letters he’d _received,_ from someone who thought his name was Carlos. He’d pretended to be him when Cecil had first woken up, after all. But why would he do that with someone else?

It maybe made a little more sense, but not much. Cecil’s head was hurting. He didn’t know how he could ask about it without just getting yelled at again. All he could really do right now was go to his room, though he was sure he wouldn’t be getting any meaningful amount of sleep tonight.


	7. Chapter 7

The sun may have taken an unreasonable amount of time to set in the sky, but once it did it left the land punishingly cold. They walked until they had stumbled a few too many times and their feet wouldn’t take them another step. Kevin had been chipper the rest of the day, even though Carlos knew he must be exhausted and this wasn’t even a trip he’d wanted to take in the first place.

It went against everything Carlos had ever learned about traveling in the desert to stop now, while the sun wasn’t beating down on them, but they hadn’t been able to afford to rest during the heat of the day like would have been wise and they could not physically go on. They gave in and Carlos started a little fire before rifling through his pack. “Do we want canned vegetarian chili or apple cinnamon oatmeal?”

“Uh. The chili.” Kevin unfolded a blanket and laid it out for them to sit on. “Are you vegetarian? I thought you ate meat.”

“I do sometimes when I’m on my own, but at home it’s easier to just eat vegetarian, ‘cause Cecil does. And this is Cecil’s pack.”

“That’s sweet of you, to eat like that for Cecil.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just logical. Means we don’t have to cook two different meals.”

“Still.”

They held their cans of chili over the fire until they were warm and then settled on the blanket, wrapping a second one around their shoulders. “We should drink this bottle of wine tonight,” Kevin said. “That’ll help warm us up.”

Carlos glanced over at it, peeking out of the top of Kevin’s backpack, and nodded. “I feel bad. I can’t believe I forgot to give it to the Carlsbergs. I just walked straight out with it still in my hand.”

“I think the walking straight out without actually having dinner with them part was probably rude enough to overshadow that.”

A laugh bubbled from Carlos’ chest, and he shoved at Kevin’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

Since they didn’t actually have a corkscrew, it took a good, frustrating ten minutes, Kevin’s nails, and a skewer from Cecil’s scoutmaster pack, but eventually they got it open. “Oh my God, that was it,” Carlos declared, flopping back onto the blanket. “That took the last of my energy. There’s none left. Hope it’s worth it.”

“It’s kind of like old times, huh?” Kevin hummed, surveying their little set-up. “Real old times, before we had houses and stuff.”

“Kind of,” he granted.

“Sit up and drink with me, you knocked the blanket off.”

The wine did make him warmer. And his head a little looser. He’d always been something of a lightweight. Once the chili was gone and the bottle was about three quarters empty, he let out a long sigh.

“Cecil didn’t know about the time thing.”

“What?”

He poked dejectedly at the fire with the skewer. “He didn’t know that time works differently in this desert. And I bet Diego didn’t tell him. How did Diego know about it anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said.

“He’s just been there, waiting and not knowing why I haven’t shown up. Diego said he gave up on me. He also said he didn’t know who I was, which is nonsense, but the first part sounds reasonable. He didn’t know, because I didn’t tell him. Because… I was ashamed.”

“I was hoping the wine would help you relax, not make you sad.”

“I should’ve told him.” Carlos jabbed at a piece of kindling hard, sending up a flurry of sparks. Well, technically, years ago he had told him that time was slowing down in Night Vale; that was actually one of the first things he ever said to Cecil. But Cecil didn’t seem to take it seriously then, and either way it was still quite a leap to expect him to make from there to conclude that time in the desert otherworld specifically was much faster. “I was ashamed of how long I stayed in this desert without him, doing research that ultimately went nowhere and making justifications and figuring my shit out, so long, and I couldn’t tell him. But he deserved to know. And now…”

Kevin nudged his shoulder with his own. “As soon as you show up, I’m sure it’ll all be okay.” The flames crackled and Carlos couldn’t tear his gaze away. “Hey, I know a little something about shame myself,” Kevin offered after a stretch of quiet.

Carlos shook his head. “But you… Before you’d even go into the Carlsbergs’ home, you made a point of apologizing and waiting for them to make their own call. Steve accused you of hurting the town and you looked him in the eyes and owned up to it, even though… even though it wasn’t really your fault, even though Strex did so much more damage in your own town. You don’t hide it, or deny it.”

“Only because I _can’t_ hide it. Every single person in Night Vale knows a lot of what I did, and people from Desert Bluffs know even more. Granted, a lot of them are more understanding, but a lot of them were more deeply affected, too. If I could hide it, believe me, I would.” There was a harrowed look on Kevin’s face, the flames dancing in his dark eyes. Now Carlos had gotten him all grim, too. Maybe the alcohol had been a bad idea.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he said with all the respect he felt.

“I stole from them.”

Carlos blinked. “What?”

“Yeah.” Kevin nodded, a smirk forming on his face and brightening his features. “I stole from them, even when I was working for them, like part of me knew they deserved it. Not money, but just little stuff here and there. Files, keys. I swiped a bottle of pills from their lab, and I’ve kept it ever since. No idea what they do, but I’m guessing it’s nothing good. I told myself once I got out that if I ever meet a person from Strex again, I’m gonna force them down their throat somehow and just see what happens.” His grip was tight on the wine bottle, bloodlust sparking in his gaze as he stared into the campfire. Carlos hadn’t seen that look in his eyes in a while. He mused how anticlimactic it would be if it turned out he’d pinched a bottle of aspirin.

“What?” Kevin demanded, turning his gaze on him. He must have chuckled out loud instead of in his head like he meant to.

“Nothing,” he evaded with a shrug. No need to crush all his dreams of revenge. “I was gonna say something sappy, like I’m proud of you. Granted, this isn’t based on the last thirty seconds.”

Kevin laughed, warming Carlos’ chest. “Hey, let’s pretend that the wine made you feel better instead of worse, and then maybe it’ll be true.”

“Worth a shot.”

That wasn’t really how things worked, but that was fine. Carlos didn’t want to be cheerful right now. They finished off the wine and put out the fire, then laid out their bedrolls for the night. They could only afford to sleep for a short while, since he wanted to be walking again as soon as possible. Every moment they were out here was—who knows how long for Cecil.

Kevin was sleepy and still a little tipsy; his words had started running together near the end of the bottle. It was so dark Carlos couldn’t really make him out, but he could hear his quiet breathing as they lay side by side.

"You seem different, Carlos," Kevin said, his voice warm with sleep.

"Right now?"

"Different than when we were here before."

Carlos closed his eyes. "I should hope so."

"Why?"

"Because…" The darkness cocooned them like a protective blanket, and somehow made it easier to speak unspeakable things into the space between them, like two young boys on a camping trip who were just figuring out what it could mean to have a friend. "I didn't really like who I became out here."

There was a soft rustling next to him. "I did." Carlos gave him a look he probably couldn't see, but he must have felt it, because he continued, "No, I know, but really. You were brilliant, kind. Passionate. Pretty obviously conflicted about some things, but that was understandable. And I'm pretty sure you were just as screwy when you got here."

He smiled quietly in the dark, thinking maybe he'd end up feeling a little better after all. It was easy to forget when Kevin was being aggravating that he did really, truly know Carlos. Better than most anyone. "And now?"

"You're stressed and snippy a lot of the time, again understandable. But you seem… more like who you thought you were supposed to be, I guess. Like you finally know you're fighting for the right things."

Carlos didn't know what to say to that. Tipsy Kevin was apparently quietly profound.

"I wonder who I was supposed to be," Kevin said, and the slur was stronger in his words now. He must be close to drifting off. "Like, originally. I guess I'm never gonna know."

He wondered what that would be like, to live with such a big piece of yourself just gone. Cecil had to deal with that too, if in a less extreme and traumatic way. "I think," he said, "that you were always meant to like wine. And...cats. And storytelling."

Kevin hummed, amused. “Are you sure you wanna get married?” His voice sounded like it was mostly stuffed into the blanket.

Carlos snorted softly. “You would make a terrible best man.”

He giggled. “Don’t get married, Carlos.”

“You don’t mean that.” That was apparent from everything he'd just said.

A long, deep exhalation came from the other bedroll. “No, I don’t.”

“Go to sleep, Kevin.” Carlos rolled onto his back, staring up at the stars. Way out here in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like there should be more of them.

“Okay.”

-

The door to his bedroom was already unlocked when Cecil got up the next morning, which meant that Diego was awake. He went to the kitchen to find him eating a bowl of cereal at the bar.

“I have the day off,” he announced once he noticed Cecil.  

Oh. Cecil mentally recalibrated his expectations for the day and grabbed himself a bowl.

“I was glad to hear you talking again last night,” Diego continued after a moment. “I know I yelled at you right after, and I don’t want that to discourage you from… continuing to talk.”

If he squinted, it was almost an apology. He tried to come up with some piece of what happened last night that he could talk about without immediately wanting to gouge his own eyes out. He pulled the milk from the fridge and poured himself a bowl of cereal.

“That audio equipment in your office,” he decided on. “I’m guessing that’s Kevin’s?”

For a moment Diego seemed torn between relief that Cecil was talking to him and his usual hesitance to discuss Kevin, but apparently the former won out. “Yeah. He’d make a lot of the pre-recorded stuff in there, sponsored ads and things like that that he didn’t absolutely have to be in the station to do.”

“Huh.” He chewed his spoonful of Cheerios thoughtfully. Regular, non-honey, non-nut Cheerios. “So you just haven’t had community radio this whole time? They haven’t replaced him?”

Diego shook his head. “No, they haven’t replaced him.”

He wondered if they’d replaced him back home. It was an idle thought, though, and he mused to himself that if the person he had been a few weeks ago had been there to hear it he probably would’ve been appalled at how little thought he gave it. That, more than anything, made him put down his spoon with a frown.

When he looked up again, Diego was staring back. He’d stopped eating, too. “What?” Cecil asked flatly.

Diego blinked. “I—” He cut himself off and bit his lip, as if struggling with whether or not to let something out.  Cecil just waited and eventually he continued, taking a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking. I know why you’re not happy here, why you can’t be happy here.”

“Oh, is that so?” Cecil drawled. This should be interesting. “Alright, I’ll bite. Why can’t I be happy here?”

“It’s because you keep thinking about what you think you’ve lost. You look at me, and you think of Carlos.”

It was a simpler answer than he’d been expecting, but Cecil realized it wasn’t entirely accurate. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at Diego and thought of Carlos. “No, I don’t,” he insisted, although he wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted Diego to know that.

“It’s okay,” Diego assured him. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Cecil wondered. “Do you look at me and think of Kevin?”

He half expected to be met with another venomous assertion that he was nothing like Kevin, but Diego just shrugged. “Sometimes. Until you open your mouth.”

Cecil chuckled. “So you must have been thinking of him a lot these days. No wonder you wanted to get me talking again.”

“That’s not the main reason,” he said with a smile. Cecil shifted restlessly on his barstool. Diego didn’t smile all that often, so when he did it was kind of a little victory. A thrilling but unnerving victory that Cecil didn’t even realize he was aiming for until it happened. “Anyway, I’m not trying to debate whether you’re still thinking about Carlos or not. I’m trying to propose a solution.”

Well, that sounded dubious. “You’ve got a solution to me thinking about what I've lost?"

“I do,” Diego said confidently. “A way to start fresh. To forget the pain of Carlos’ betrayal and be content where you are in the present moment.”

“O-kay…” Cecil narrowed his eyes in an attempt to look skeptical instead of terrified. “You’re starting to sound like you’re trying to get me to join a pyramid scheme, and I’ll just let you know now, I’ve already learned my lesson with those.”

“No scheme, though I have been a little bit anxious about bringing it up, ‘cause I’m not sure how it will be received.” Diego laughed a little, and it was a distinctly nervous sound. “You see, it’s a pill. You take it, and it’ll help you move on.”

“A pill,” Cecil repeated.

He nodded. “You’ll forget those things that hurt you and be able to focus on right now. And don’t worry, it shouldn’t leave you confused or scared about what you’re missing.”

Cecil stared. “Okay, now I’m worried that you’re actually serious, and also concerned about how you know the exact effects of this pill.”

“I’ve done my research,” Diego said, sliding off his stool. “And I am very serious.” He vanished into his office for a moment before returning with a small, unmarked pill bottle.

"Oh, my God, you’re serious." He slid off his own stool and pointed at the offending object in Diego’s hand. “That, that thing, that’s gonna do what, exactly?”

“Make you forget. But just episodic memories, you wouldn’t lose your sense of self or your abilities. Episodic memories, meaning like, events that have happened to you—”

“I know what episodic memory is; I like science.”

“Well, that’s what it would do.”

“Wh-why, why would I want to do that?” He couldn’t take his eyes off the little bottle. Had that just been in Diego’s office this whole time? All these weeks?

“I just think it would make things a lot easier on you,” Diego said. Cecil tried to gauge his body language. He seemed a little tense, his knuckles tight on the bottle, and maybe he really was nervous about bringing up this whole topic.

“Wait a minute.” Cecil crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, so if I forget about Carlos, then you can have him to yourself, is that it? Kind of seems like a strange workaround, but alright. I mean, you could just kill me, unless you think Carlos wouldn’t forgive you for that. But you know what? I kinda think he might not forgive you for this whole thing anyway.”

The furrow between Diego’s brow was getting more pronounced the longer Cecil talked. “Hold on, you think I want Carlos? Why would I want to be with Carlos?”

“But—those letters in your office.”

The confusion melted away. “Ah.” He grimaced. “Cecil, I didn’t write those.”

Cecil dared to feel tentatively relieved. “You didn’t?”

He shook his head. “Kevin did.”

Kevin? “To you?” Cecil took a shot, though he thought he could guess the answer.

The furrow was back. “No, to Carlos. He’s in love with the guy.” Diego’s tone was acrid.

Kevin wrote the letters. Kevin was in love with Carlos. Cecil sat back down on his stool, feeling a bit like a glass perched on the very edge of a counter. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

Carlos had never said anything. Maybe he’d just been trying to spare Kevin’s feelings by not spreading it around. “Does Carlos know?”

“Well, I thought you knew Carlos a little better than I do, but I would think so.”

It felt like he’d been handed the rest of the pieces of the puzzle, if he could only get his head on straight long enough to fit them together. “But why would you have letters written by your boyfriend to another man pinned up in your office?” He remembered the recording equipment. “Or is it actually Kevin’s office?”

“It’s my office. I put them there…” He shifted uncomfortably, and Cecil got the feeling that he was talking about this despite his better judgement, maybe because for the first time he actually wanted something from Cecil. “As a reminder. For when I’m weak, and want to take Kevin back. It’s to remind me that he doesn’t really love me, and never will. Seeing them helps strengthen my resolve.”

"When did he write the letters? Is there a chance he doesn't still feel that way?"

He shook his head. "If you'd read them you'd understand."

Cecil dropped his eyes to the countertop. There was still a bowl of cereal there. He’d completely forgotten about it. “So is that when you started sleeping in your office? When you found those?”

“Yes,” Diego said flatly. “Now can we get back to the matter at hand? This pill. Is it something you’d be interested in?”

It seemed odd that he’d be asking him about this, when he’d never consulted him on any other important matters, like say, locking him in the bathroom every day or being here in general. Maybe he was trying to break his spirit. He was looking at Cecil like he genuinely thought this would be a help to him.

Cecil actually took a moment to consider it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lost a significant chunk of memory. What if those times were voluntary too? What if Cecil’s mind was just predisposed to be unable to handle a certain amount of pain, and he just did things like this to survive?

He thought of Carlos, who’d told him everything was going to be okay. Carlos, who knew where he was and still hadn’t shown. Carlos who was either dead or off somewhere with Kevin, who was in love with him. He squeezed his eyes shut. It wasn’t Carlos’ fault Kevin was in love with him. Who wouldn’t be? He trusted Carlos to be faithful to him, but he realized that he’d lost all faith that he’d ever actually show up here, that anything would ever change. Things in this house simply didn’t change. Ever. And maybe there was nothing even Carlos could do about that.

He thought of his friends, his family, Khoshekh. Of Janice. Janice, his little basketball all-star. Janice who didn’t like hugs and was so, so smart.

“No.” His throat burned and his eyes stung and he realized that for the first time since he’d been here, he was crying. The next breath he took came out all hiccupy and gaspy, and oh God, he wasn’t going to be able to stop. “No, I don’t want it.”

“Hey.” Cecil’s eyes were still screwed shut, so he heard rather than saw Diego round the counter. “Hey, it’s okay.” He wrapped Cecil up in his arms where he sat and Cecil buried his face in his shirt, the sobs that had been building up and being shoved down for weeks pushing themselves out so forcefully he was afraid they might just crack his chest. Diego was not any of the people Cecil would have chosen to be hugging him right now, but he was here. He squeezed Cecil close and pressed his cheek to the top of his head. “Let me know if you ever change your mind," he murmured, his breath warm against Cecil's hair.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, sticking to a posting schedule??  
> it's more likely than you think

It was still dark by the time Carlos’ alarm went off, which he couldn’t quite help but take as a positive thing time-wise even though he knew it might mean nothing at all. It was at least a positive thing temperature-wise. He started stuffing everything back into his pack as Kevin groaned and rustled awake.

There was a north-facing canyon in the distance, and they headed toward that. A canyon oriented in that direction in this hemisphere would be shaded during the most blistering parts of the afternoon, so it was likely that it would have retained some rainwater. As they neared it, sure enough, he saw a cloud of mosquitoes. They always knew where the water was. He couldn’t really afford to be too concerned that they were glowing. If the water had caused that, then so be it. Carlos would glow if it meant he survived long enough to get Cecil back.

They found a small pool at the base of a crag and refilled their canteens. The mosquitoes were happy to have something to bite, so Kevin and Carlos got in and out quickly. If the water didn’t make them glow, the bites might. Carlos considered nabbing a few to study later, but by the time he would be able to get around to it they would surely be dead, so he fought the urge to stick a couple in a jar. The old temptations of this desert really were strong.

They’d been maintaining a pretty good pace for a while, soaking up as much of the coolness as they could while it lasted, when Carlos glanced over at Kevin, who was tapping out of an app on his phone. He almost tripped in the sand.

“Is that—” he shut his mouth, not wanting to call attention to it in case he was right. But it was too late now.

“What?” asked Kevin curiously.

“Is that… me?”

“Is what you?”

“Your phone’s background.” He pointed to the photo partially obstructed by the apps on the screen.

“Oh!” Kevin grinned teasingly. “Carlos, you flatter yourself. No, that’s Diego.”

“What?” He grabbed the phone out of his hand, swiping the apps aside to see it better. _“That’s_ Diego?”

“Yep!”

Upon closer inspection he could see that it in fact, was not him, but the resemblance was… more than uncanny. It was unnerving. “Wow. He looks more like me than you and Cecil.”

“I think it’s our hair. I have better hair than Cecil.”

Carlos didn’t exactly agree, but he kept that to himself, still staring at the picture. This was who Cecil had been with this whole time? There was something about that that tightened his gut and felt wrong in a way he couldn’t quite put into words. “Should I be concerned?”

“I mean…” Kevin shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Did I start dating him partly because he reminded me of you? Maybe. But then when I actually got to know him, it wasn’t like that at all. We like so many of the same things, and he’s so sweet and thoughtful—”

“Woah, that’s not what I meant.” Carlos held up his hand to stop him. “Although that’s… good to know, I guess. I meant—” He took one last look at the screen before handing it back over to Kevin. “I don’t know what I meant, exactly. Something about Cecil being held captive by someone who looks just like me. It just feels weird.”

“Oh. Okay, I’m gonna just, breeze past that one,” Kevin chuckled. “I don’t know about that, I mean, you’re here with me, and that’s kind of a similar situation, minus the captivity.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

They walked on for a few moments with nothing but the sound of their feet in the sand and an animal out of sight making a mating call Carlos recognized from one of his wildlife investigations. He had to remind himself that he was walking with quite an urgent purpose and was not out here to study behavioral patterns of desert animals before he broke the quiet again. “So. You really love Diego, huh?”

The answer was all over his face as he let out a little sigh. “Yeah. I really love Diego. No one’s ever been so good to me, at least, not that I know of. He wasn’t raised religious like I was, but he’s smart. He doesn’t believe me, though.”

“That he’s smart?”

“That I love him. Once he found out about, um, about you, he just got stuck on the idea that he was some kind of knock-off. Nothing I said would change his mind.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Kevin shrugged, taking a swig of water and wiping his mouth. “It’s not a totally crazy conclusion to jump to. I mean, that’s how you saw me, isn’t it?”

“What? No!”

“Come on.” Kevin gave him a look, but that was far from the truth and he needed to know it.

The first several months that Carlos knew Kevin, the guy had an extraordinarily hard time dealing with down time. He thought that if he wasn’t doing something, he was worth nothing, and spent a lot of time in a frenzy over what could be done. Carlos happened to share this curse, albeit to a less dire extent and with no excuse, so they alternated between burying themselves in their separate, self-assigned workloads, and eventually forcing each other to take breaks and breathe, even to get out and have a little fun. As Kevin started taking back his own autonomy, he also began to question whether there was a good reason that he had to be cheerful all the time, so he swung wildly in the other direction and began to complain about _everything._ It could be tiresome, but sometimes his bitchiness was amusing, and he found some kind of balance between it all sooner or later. He started up a brand new radio station almost single-handedly with much drive and even more fuss. Sometimes he’d get so angry he could barely think, could barely see (Carlos could hardly name a person who had more to be angry about), and he would stomp around Carlos’ R&D lab while the scientist carefully and quietly took apart inorganic compounds under a microscope until he no longer felt in danger of deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people's hats off, or something less Herman Melville and more Stephen King. In turn he would listen to Carlos gripe about the pitfalls of his research and his general uncertainty about where he belonged in the big Scheme of things with steady encouragement and interest.

“No, I won’t ‘come on’. Listen. Sure, you look like Cecil in some ways, and yeah, occasionally you remind me of him to a degree that’s actually kind of painful, but the parts that don’t remind me of him at all aren’t bad things, or… or less. They’re different. They’re you. You’re no knock-off, I never thought that. I thought...” He paused. Man, something about taking a long trek through the desert side by side really must be spurring them to just spill their guts to each other. Kevin had caught the bug too, willingly talking about things he'd been evading up until now. His mother would probably say it was the spirits of lost travelers compelling them to untangle their thoughts aloud, and suggest seeking out sacred datura in the area.

“What?” prompted Kevin, and Carlos was pulled from his stubborn rumination that the proper, scientific name for the flower was actually Datura wrightii and that it would only be useful if he wanted to block acetylcholine to his central nervous system.

“I thought you were the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“Oh.” Kevin seemed to ponder that as they walked, and when he raised his handkerchief to cough the sand from his lungs, Carlos thought he saw him hiding a smile.

So there was really someone out there who looked just like him. Carlos had assumed that was only a phenomenon for people from these scientifically abnormal towns like Night Vale and Desert Bluffs, but that did not seem to be the case. The implications could be staggering. Where was Diego from? The same place Carlos was from, or maybe somewhere nearby?

“I’m the Kevin,” he observed with a little chuckle of amusement that may very well have been brought on by the rising heat.

“What?”

“The double with the, um. Less imposing voice. Diego sounds kind of like a young Mark Ruffalo over the phone.”

“Who?”

“The actor? I was a big Dr. Banner fan as a kid, not that he was played by Mark Ruffalo at the time, and not that his voice is _imposing_ , necessarily, but y’know, it’s deeper.”

“I don’t know what you just said.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Carlos waved it off. Maybe Diego had the better voice, but he still apparently felt threatened by Carlos. He felt a little guiltily smug about that for all of two seconds before the pieces clicked into place.

_I'm afraid this is much more personal than that._

“Oh, no.”

It wasn’t personal because Diego knew Cecil somehow. It was personal because it was revenge. Against him.

“Something wrong?”

Cecil was being held captive by a crazy man because of him. Diego indulged his phone calls and messed with his head and gave his impossible little ultimatums, because this was all for _him._

Another step and a fresh examination of the horizon brought Desert Bluffs Too into view, tiny in the distance, little buildings nestled among the dunes in the shadow of a familiar lighthouse-topped mountain. Carlos’ heart leapt. He was going to be sick.

-

Cecil’s life was something he hardly even had to think about anymore. It was easy and narrow. He’d wake up, eat breakfast, Diego would go to work, he’d wile away his time in the bathroom, Diego would come home, they’d eat dinner and maybe they’d watch TV, maybe Diego would get some more work done in his office while Cecil would try and do some chores around the house so he felt like he was contributing something. He didn’t work, he didn’t pay for his keep, so he figured this was the least he could do. And he knew even as he felt that urgency to do something that it was stupid, since of course he hadn’t asked for this life or to be here at all. But he still felt it. Scrubbing down counters and sweeping floors gave him something to do with himself, anyway.

It wasn’t a routine he would have chosen, but it was getting to be pretty comfortable. He had dropped weight rapidly the first couple of weeks he had been here from the constant stress and anxiety he held in his body with every waking moment, but he was starting to gain some of it back. He no longer feared for his life every time he took a step or opened his mouth. He knew logically that Diego was just as capable of shooting or stabbing him as he'd always been, he just… didn't think he would.

The comfort of the routine might have been complete, except that Diego kept bringing up that pill every so often, whenever Cecil would be a little mopey or quiet. It was always presented as an offer, with Diego emphasizing that it was completely his choice, but the repetitive nature of the request made it a bit difficult not to feel pressure. Cecil didn’t understand. If he wanted him to take it so badly, why didn’t he just force him? A gun to his head would be a pretty quick way to get a pill down. Hell, the second morning he’d been here he’d taken two pills that Diego had given him, and he hadn’t even seen where they’d come from, too out of his mind with pain to question it. Why tell him about it at all?

Eventually the only conclusion he could come to was that Diego genuinely wanted this to be Cecil’s decision. He tried not to make the jump that that meant Diego maybe actually did care about him, but it was difficult not to.

One evening when he let Cecil out of the bathroom, he had a box in his hand.

“What’s that?” asked Cecil, stretching out his legs.

“Just a board game I picked up on the way home, I thought it might be fun,” he said, setting it on the counter. “I thought maybe you could read the instructions while I heat up dinner and then we could figure it out, I just got us a couple of those frozen TV dinners so it won’t take long. I don’t know, only if you want to.” He shrugged, clearly trying to play it off as nothing. It was kind of cute.

“That does sound fun,” agreed Cecil.

“Alright, good!” Diego nodded. “Good.”

Cecil peered at the instructions on the couch while Diego tore open boxes in the kitchen. It didn’t take long to see that it was a fairly involved game, but he’d probably enjoy the mental stimulation after so long of not much. “1-8 players. I could play this by myself while you’re at work.”

“Oh really? You’ll probably get sick of it and never want to play it with me again, though.”

Cecil glanced up. The words sounded joking, but he could never be too sure. “Maybe,” he said neutrally. The microwave beeped and Diego came over with the food. “So it looks like we have to… close portals around town to stop monsters from coming in from other planes of existence, and make sure that we don’t go insane while we’re doing it or else… I dunno, maybe the portals will open up again, or we’ll just die, or something.” He passed over the instructions. "So basically, just day to day life.”

He pulled his meal toward him, a bowl of potatoes and chickpeas. The first bite tasted—weird. Wrong. He paused, his spoon hovering in the air.

“There’s like a ‘Doom Track,’ and if that gets all the way to the end then this big guy called the Ancient One breaks into the town,” said Diego. “That sounds bad. Probably should try to avoid that.”

“Did you put something in my food?”

“What?”

Cecil’s pulse was a dull roar in his ears. “It tastes off. Did you put the pill in my food?”

“No, of course not.” Diego looked startled. “I just put it in the microwave.” Cecil just stared at the bowl, not sure what to believe. “Cecil. It’s a frozen TV dinner of Indian cuisine probably manufactured nowhere near India. I think it’s bound to taste a little off.”

“Oh,” said Cecil, uncertain. Maybe that was right. Maybe he was overreacting about nothing. Diego did look pretty caught off guard by the accusation.

But the fact that he ate a bite that tasted wrong and the very first thought in his head was that he’d been poisoned made him realize that he really didn’t trust Diego. Maybe right now he would prefer that Cecil made the decision of whether or not to take the pill on his own. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get frustrated by his continual refusal and change his mind. If this was really what he wanted, he would probably find a way to make it happen eventually. And then Cecil might not even know. The pill could be tasteless, and he could eat it with his food and lose everything, everyone, and he wouldn’t even know it.

As he sat there, staring at his bowl that may or may not have been tampered with, he realized there was only one way to make sure that didn’t happen. To make sure that whatever happened, happened on his own terms.

He put his spoon down and pushed the bowl away. Even if Diego really had put the pill in his food, one bite shouldn’t do a lot of damage. Hopefully. “You’re right. Of course. Sorry. I don’t think I’m gonna eat it, though. It’s pretty bad.” He stood up a little unsteadily. “I think I’ll just make a sandwich.”

“Okay,” Diego said like _suit yourself._ “Sorry about the food.” Cecil made a PB&J at the counter, went back to the couch and played Arkham Horror with Diego while silently preparing for what his life was going to have to be after tonight.

 

The next morning he was awake long before Diego. He had hardly slept the whole night. His mind just couldn’t calm down enough to drift off more than once or twice; it kept replaying everything that could go wrong and everything he was risking and twisting his stomach into tighter and tighter knots. By the time the lock on his door clicked open, he was a wreck. He pulled himself out of bed and left the room, not bothering to try and get any more presentable than he was. Looking like a wreck who hadn’t slept all night might work in his favor for this one.

Diego was making a pot of coffee in the kitchen. He looked up and Cecil was sure that he was standing wrong, that his hands were wrong, that Diego would take one look at his face and know everything.

“Your eyes look a little bloodshot,” said Diego. “Rough night?”

“I want the pill.”

It was like someone had threaded a string through Diego’s spine and yanked it tight. He might not be needing that coffee after all. “Really?” He slouched back down a little as if realizing the exuberance of his reaction. “Are you sure? You seemed pretty freaked out about the whole thing last night.”

“Yeah, but it got me thinking. My knee-jerk reaction was to freak out, because… well, you know, plus I was caught off guard, but the actual moment when I thought I might have ingested the pill?” He stared at his bare feet like he was a little ashamed to admit it, drawing on all the skills he’d acquired playing Pippin in his high school’s production of South Pacific. ”It was relief. And guilt, at the fact that I was feeling relief, which contributed to the freak-out, but—it was like I didn’t have to hold onto this giant weight anymore. I could just… be.”

Diego was listening intently, and it wasn’t like he ever acted uninterested when Cecil talked or that he didn’t listen well, but it was as if this was the first thing of real importance that had ever come out of Cecil’s mouth. Cecil was struck with the shivering notion that this had never just been some way to make things easier on him. This was the plan.

“I’ll get the pill.”

He disappeared into his office and came back with that little bottle in hand, and then poured Cecil a glass of water. Cecil shook out one of the little capsules and placed it on the counter, leaving it there while he took his time making himself a bowl of cereal. He ate at a measured pace, and when he thought it was pretty close to time for Diego to leave for work, pulled the glass toward him and picked up the pill between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m nervous,” he said, entirely honestly.

“It’ll just be like dozing off and waking up again,” Diego said, his voice gentle as he came around behind Cecil. “No pain.”

“How do you know that?” Cecil asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

Diego crossed his arms over his chest, looking embarrassed. “I had a friend over here once, and she had a migraine. She was in our bathroom and asked what the pills in the cabinet were, and I told her it was aspirin, ‘cause we have aspirin in the cabinet, and I didn’t even know this bottle was in there. So she took one… It wasn’t the aspirin. I felt terrible, still do, but she never suffered any adverse effects other than her memory.”

“Yikes.” So that was the ‘research’ Diego had said he’d done? Where did these pills even come from? “Well, here goes,” he said, his hand trembling lightly, and thought that maybe he should seem even more distraught than this, facing the erasure of the life he knew. He let the tremor in his hand increase and it was easy enough to produce a few tears in his eyes; he had quite a bit to cry about, after all.

He blinked and one tear escaped past his lashes. Diego rubbed small circles into his back. Cecil popped the pill into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of water. Once he swallowed, Diego stopped the movement of his hand and just stared at him, so Cecil opened his mouth wide, tongue out to show it was gone.

“I think you made a good choice,” Diego encouraged.

“Hope so.” Cecil’s voice was small. He wiped his eyes and sniffed. Diego went back to the cabinets and pulled down a plastic bowl, then grabbed the cereal box and had a seat on the other barstool. Cecil stared. Wasn’t he going to work? He’d assumed that Diego had already eaten breakfast, since he had just sat there watching Cecil while he ate his.

“You have work today, right?” he asked, hoping he sounded like he was just trying to find something to say. The man nodded and poured some milk into his Cheerios.

“Did I ever tell you about how Kevin and I met?” he asked.

“No,” Cecil answered uneasily. As if Diego ever talked about Kevin without prompting. Not since those first few days.

“It was in an old abandoned theatre. Not like a movie theatre, like one for stage plays. I loved that place, I used to go there all the time to be alone and just be with my thoughts. Only this one time, there was this guy there, and that was kind of annoying because that was my place and I went there to try and shut out the world, you know? Apparently he had been running from someone or something, I was never really sure on that because I was annoyed and not really listening, but in any case he had just ducked in there to get out of the street. And I was fully prepared to try and ignore him but then he got kind of flirty and I started listening, because, well, he was really hot.”

“Why are you telling me this?” He wasn’t supposed to be sitting around reminiscing about his lost love; he was supposed to be going to work. He needed to go to work.

“Because you should know. You need to know.” Cecil was quieted by the fervor in Diego’s voice. “Just listen, okay? Kevin and I started hanging out there a lot, fooling around and stuff, and eventually we wanted to see each other outside of the confines of some old abandoned theatre. But it didn’t work. We’d try to make plans to meet at a certain location, and end up describing some place the other had never even heard of. We could never find each other anywhere else. We eventually put together that we didn’t even live in the same town. There was just this old theatre that existed in both Desert Bluffs and Madera, where I’m from. I think it must be similar to, what was it, your dog park? Only not quite the same, because it wasn’t quite a pathway between two dimensions, it was just… a place that existed in two at once.

“So besides throwing my whole perception of how the world works on its head, it was really frustrating, because by that point I was pretty sure that Kevin was the love of my life, but I dealt with it and settled for continuing to meet him there, because, well because I was pretty sure Kevin was the love of my life, and it was much better than nothing. But I’d been going to a local college, and once I graduated I got accepted to a grad program out of state. So I left, and we lost touch, and nobody even comforted me by saying we were just kids and that's what happens, because I'd never told anyone about the guy I was seeing in a different dimension."

Half of Cecil’s attention was occupied stilling his fingers from tapping out an impatient rhythm on the countertop and his leg from jiggling the stool across the floor, because Diego needed to stop talking and _leave_ , but the rest of him registered enough of Diego’s words to realize they didn’t make sense. “Wait, what do you mean you were just kids? How long have you known Kevin?”

“Since college, weren’t you listening?”

“Both of you were in college?”

“He was finishing up an internship at his local radio station.”

Cecil’s mouth fell open. “So you meant _Desert Bluffs_ Desert Bluffs. Before…”

Diego nodded gravely. “Before. After, when I happened to find him out here living in my dimension, it seemed like it must have been fate. But there were a lot of things he didn't remember from back then. Myself included."

“Oh.” His tongue was starting to feel a little thick and coated, and he was trying not to panic. “So you had to start over.”

“More than start over, as it turns out. I had to overcome this new ideal he had in his head that I could never line up with, and I didn’t even realize it existed until I found those letters."

Cecil gripped tight to the edges of his stool and said nothing. He knew full digestion took hours, but he also had never heard of a pill that could alter a person's memory before, so he thought he maybe had good reason to be a bit frantic.

"Anyway," grumbled Diego, seeming a little sour, "I just wanted somebody to know that. I have to get to work. I'll see you tonight."

"Yeah," Cecil agreed dimly.

He walked himself into the bathroom. The lock clicked behind him. He waited with bated breath for the sound of the front door. Once he heard it he immediately hunched over the toilet, grabbed his toothbrush, pressed the end of it to the back of his tongue, and retched until there was nothing left of his breakfast.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said the sentence "I won't question the scientists" on the radio the other day and could feel the spirit of Cecil Palmer overtake my body. I swear he's not why I'm getting into this field.
> 
> We're getting close, friends! I'm gonna miss this story when it's done.

Cecil spent the day naming the people in his life on a loop in his head, the volume of his thoughts turned up loud as if thinking them with more intensity would help him keep them in a tight, closed fist. When he started to fear that it wasn’t enough, he switched to saying them aloud. “Janice, my niece. Carlos, my love. My fiancé. My _fiancé_. Carlos. Old Woman Josie. My dear friend. Abby, my sister. Janice’s mother. Janice, the best kid ever. _Steve._ ” He said the name with the usual bite, but found that he wasn’t really feeling it. He panicked for a moment, thinking he’d forgotten how much he hated Steve, but then he settled back down once he examined that thought and discovered he’d just had a shift in perspective. Actively hating Steve seemed silly and inconsequential when he didn’t even hate Diego, who had done things much more deserving of his ire. Perhaps he’d lost the capacity to hate anyone at all. Probably if he saw Steve he would find it again, but it seemed unlikely that he would see him again. “My brother-in-law. Janice’s stepfather. Earl, my old friend. Dana, my friend, former intern, and mayor of my old town. Night Vale. No. My _town,_ Night Vale.”

He’d tried making himself hurl a couple more times, just in case he hadn’t completely emptied, but there was nothing left. Just bile, and then not even that. He’d made himself shaky and lightheaded. “Carlos, beautiful Carlos,” he murmured, huddled against the wall, “A scientist and a brilliant mind and an incredible heart. Night Vale, where I grew up and went to Scouts and played in Mission Grove Park and avoided the library like a smart kid, and… and did a bunch of other things I have trouble remembering but that’s not, that’s _not_ because of that pill. My… my bowling league. Janice. The community radio station. The… the interns that I need to remember so that I wasn’t lying when I said they would be missed."

He talked to the bathroom walls until it was mostly incoherent muttering, pulling himself up from the floor to drink from the sink when his mouth got too dry. He needed to hold on. He needed to stay coherent. He was terrified of falling asleep.

He only fell silent when the front door creaked open. "Cecil!" A voice called. That was odd. Diego would know where he was. He pulled himself to his feet, managing to sway only slightly.

Nothing happened for long enough that he thought maybe he should do something. He cleared his raw throat and scraped out, "What? I'm in the bathroom!"

A moment later the door opened. "Oh, there you are." Diego smiled softly at him.

"It was locked," he said, allowing a note of mild confusion into his voice.

"It was locked?" Diego's smile vanished and was replaced with wide eyes, guilt-ridden. Oh, he was good. "You've been in here all this time? I'm so sorry, honey." He pulled Cecil into a hug. He smelled good. He always smelled good.

"Who are you?" Cecil asked with what he felt to be the appropriate amount of curiosity.

"I'm Diego," he said, pulling back. "We live together." He didn't act surprised that Cecil didn't know.

"Oh." They lived together. Cecil hoped he would allow it to stay at that, nothing more. The 'honey' had sent a shiver of unease down his spine. Diego wasn't supposed to call him that, for some reason more significant than just the fact that he was not his honey. Though he wasn't sure exactly what that was.

"You look awful, come on out and eat something.” So Cecil did. He wasn’t sure what questions he should be asking, if any, so he decided to stay quiet and let Diego take the lead.

But Diego wasn’t saying much either. He seemed jittery as they ate, like he didn’t really know what to do with this now that he’d gotten it. At one point he knocked over his own glass of water, getting Cecil’s plate a little wet. He stammered out his apologies, grabbing paper towels to mop up the spill. Cecil just mumbled that it was fine and the evening continued on.

“What are you thinking about?” Diego finally broke and asked after they’d cleaned up from dinner.

 _How awkward that dinner was,_ he thought, and said, “This is a nice house.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, it’s your house too.” Cecil shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. After a beat of silence Diego grimaced. “This is weird, isn’t it?” Cecil just shrugged. “Do you want to watch something?” Diego tried.

“Sure.”

Pointing out that a situation was weird was almost always done in an attempt to make it less so, but it didn’t really work. They watched an episode of Jessica Jones side by side on the couch. Cecil could feel the tension in Diego’s body the whole time, even though they weren’t touching. They hardly said a handful of sentences to each other up until Diego decided to go to bed.

He didn’t lock Cecil’s door that night. Cecil curled up on his side on the bed and replayed their interactions over and over in his head, trying to figure out what was bothering him so much. It had been awkward and Cecil hadn’t known what to say without stepping on a mine, sure, but there was something else. He’d felt like he’d just bathed in slime ever since Diego had hugged him. Was that it? He didn’t want Diego touching him? No, that wasn’t it. He’d said something. He’d called Cecil ‘honey,’ that’s right, that was it. And that was wrong, that felt wrong to hear, because…

He shot upright in his bed, heart pounding. Carlos.

“Oh no, no no no no no.”

This was not happening. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Carlos, Carlos. Carlos calls me honey, among many other adorable nicknames; it’s the most overtly affectionate part of his personality. Oh God, oh God.” He wanted to write his name somewhere, to carve it into stone, but anywhere he did that Diego might see.

There was no way he could go to sleep now. He climbed off the bed and huddled into a corner of the room, wanting the feel of something solid, something grounding at his back. He recounted whatever memories of the two of them he could think of, telling them quietly to himself like he might regale his listeners with them on the radio, except much more hurriedly and close to a breakdown than he usually preferred to be on the radio. It didn’t matter if he never saw Carlos again, if these stories remained just a part of his past with no hope of adding more to them in the future. He needed to remember them.

When he found his eyelids had closed, he snapped them open again. Over and over again, each time. He couldn’t lose consciousness, who knew what would happen if he lost consciousness… Eventually it would have to happen, but not now, sometime later when he could be sure he wouldn’t lose anything. Just one more night, and then surely it would be a little safer.

But he hadn’t gotten sleep the night before, either. Eventually pure exhaustion dragged him down.

For some reason he woke up hunched in the corner of his room. His legs were folded at an uncomfortable angle, so he stretched them out in front of him. There was a nagging tug at the back of his mind, like he had been supposed to remember something when he woke up.

Carlos. That was it. He had been making sure he wouldn’t forget he was dating Carlos. Beautiful Carlos. His chest felt warm and tingly just from the thought alone. He put on some clothes and went out into the hall, pleased to find that his door was unlocked, though as soon as he thought it he wondered why he would think his door might ever be locked from the outside.

In the kitchen, a man was pouring a glass of orange juice at the counter. He had part of his hair pulled up onto the top of his head in a sloppy bun that most of it wasn’t quite long enough to fit into. Cecil’s lips quirked up, struck with the urge to run his fingers through the gently curling, left-behind strands. He came up behind him and covered his eyes with his hands, mouth close to his ear. “Guess who?”

The man stiffened, his hand flying to his pocket. “Sorry,” Cecil chuckled, sliding his hands back from his eyes to smooth down his neck. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” Carlos turned his head, and Cecil weaved his fingers into those soft strands and kissed him.

Carlos just stood there unmoving for a moment, apparently still recovering from his surprise, before turning to face him fully and tilting his head just so to kiss him back, his hand curving over the nape of Cecil’s neck. Cecil sighed into it, pressing forward until Carlos’ back hit the countertop, drawing a small noise from his throat. Cecil paused and leaned back, eyes opening.

His stomach dropped straight to the floor. This was not Carlos. Diego’s eyes were still closed, his lips just barely parted. Cecil removed his hands and took a step back, struggling to swallow. Diego opened his eyes at the loss of contact.

“I’m sorry, I-I don’t know why I did that,” Cecil forced out.

“No, it’s—” Diego cleared his throat and shook his head, blinking. “I didn’t mind. I was thinking actually, earlier, that I wished I’d done a better job getting us off on the right foot last night.”

“And this is a… better foot?”

“I’d say so, wouldn’t you?” He smiled, cute and a little hesitant, and reached out to grasp Cecil’s wrist lightly. Cecil could feel his own pulse fluttering wildly against Diego’s thumb. He wished desperately that he could take it back, rewind, _not_ do what he’d just done. “Don’t worry about it,” Diego assured him, pressing the briefest, softest peck against Cecil’s mouth.

He was the one who went and ruined whatever careful balance they had, not Diego. He’d elevated it into something more than just living together, and he didn’t know how to undo it. “Okay,” he squeaked.

“I have to go to work in a bit. Are you gonna be okay here?”

“Um. Yeah,” he said, wondering what would happen if he said no. He had to stop himself from walking to the bathroom on autopilot, because he wasn’t supposed to know that was where he went. Although if he did slip up like that, he could just act a little confused and blame it on muscle memory.

But Diego never told him to get in the bathroom. He just finished up what he was doing in the kitchen, packed up his computer bag, said goodbye, and left. Cecil stood dumbly in the middle of the living room.

So this was what it felt like to have Diego’s trust. He tried the front door just in case Diego had truly lost it, but it was locked up tight. He wondered what he was supposed to make of that.

Well. He had the whole house to himself, for the first time—ever. In however long he had been here. Even before the pill, he had stopped asking, too discouraged to hear the answer. It was months by now, surely.

What could he do with this freedom? He wandered the house for a while, poking in cabinets and drawers. A lot of it was stuff that he’d already seen from cleaning the house, but he did find a sketchbook in a chest in the living room that he had been too nervous to pull out before for fear that Diego would come out of his office and see him flipping through it. He pulled it out now, opening it to a random page. On it was a swirling floral design done in blue ink pen, with tendrils of flowers curling around the center in a shape reminiscent of the sun. He traced his finger over the smoothly curving lines. It would be awesome as a chest or back tattoo. Maybe that’s what it was.

The rest of the sketchbook showed equal talent. Desert landscapes, fantasy landscapes, geometric designs, people. Several of Diego. With no prior knowledge, he would have definitely said that whoever owned this sketchbook was very much in love with Diego. Had he seen this? He supposed if he had, the drawings might just seem cruel in light of Kevin’s apparent deception.

He replaced the sketchbook and took a nap in his own bed, a luxury which felt like the height of indulgence. He was still a bit anxious about forgetting after what had happened that morning, but forgetting Diego was at least better than forgetting Carlos. Although it had lead to a rather unfortunate consequence. But he was exhausted, and he had this _bed_ , when usually during the day he had to make do with a wall or a bathroom mirror, and he ended up waking up feeling like he was emerging from a coma, it had been such a deep sleep. The deepest he’d had in days.

He took quick stock of his memories, decently satisfied that at least the essential ones were there, although he supposed he would have no real way of knowing if he was missing something vital. His stomach growled and he realized there was no reason he couldn’t eat something. Lunch had become something of a foreign concept, but if he was hungry, why not? He padded out to the kitchen and made a PB&J, using the knife he still kept transferring into the pocket of whatever pants he was wearing.

Eating in the middle of the day. This new arrangement they had might not be so bad.

 

He’d been worried that Diego would try to kiss him now that that was a thing that had happened between them, but he didn’t. He was much more physically affectionate than he’d been before, leaning his head on Cecil’s shoulder when they were on the couch, stroking his hair if Cecil was laying down, resting a hand on his knee, but he didn’t take it beyond that. The familiarity was much preferred to the tension of before, and Cecil found himself feeling a warm little glow, a thrill in his chest each time Diego would bestow some small gesture of closeness. It felt like winning his favor, gaining his approval, and made him think there was less to worry about.

One evening Cecil was doing laundry while Diego was in his office, and he came across an article of clothing he hadn’t had to wash before. It was one of Diego’s, kind of like a sweater, but thin and a little filmy. He searched for a tag to see if it was safe to machine-wash but found none, so he carried it over to Diego’s office door to ask. His hand was raised to knock when he heard Diego talking quietly through the door.

“—than that. And much more selfish.”

Cecil lowered his hand. He didn’t want to disturb him while he was on the phone.

“I guess you’ll see when you get here, won’t you?” Diego said. “If that’s all you had to say, I think we’re done here.”

He backed up quickly from the door, in case Diego was about to come out as soon as he hung up. Cecil wouldn’t want to be just standing there. Sure enough, a few moments later the door opened.

“Are we expecting company?” Cecil asked from over by the laundry room, effectively ruining the guise that he hadn’t been listening in. He was just too curious.

“What? No.” Diego looked alarmed by the mere suggestion.

Cecil propped the hamper on his hip. "Who was that you were talking to, then?"

"You heard that?"

"Just the tail end. You said something about you'll see when you get here."

“Oh, yeah.” Diego scratched at the back of his head, looking strangely relieved. “It was just a work associate who’s coming into town.”

“Oh. Not to the house.”

“No, not to the house.”

“Okay.” He swallowed down a strange sense of disappointment and pulled out the odd sweater thing. “So, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

 

Another afternoon when he had free reign of the house, he was struck with the desire to cook something. He rifled through the fridge, disappointed but unsurprised that there was not much to work with in there. Diego didn’t cook all that much, after all. He supposed he could wait until he got home and ask Diego to pick stuff up at the store, but he wanted to make something _now_ , and besides, it would have been kind of fun to surprise him with it.

He’d just about given up when he spotted a box of brownie mix at the very back of the highest cabinet. “A-ha!” He pulled it out, checking what he’d need. Just eggs, oil, and water. There was vegetable oil in the pantry, and one of the few things in the bare fridge was a half-dozen carton of eggs, since Diego did cook breakfast every once in a while. Baking wasn’t exactly cooking, but right now it would scratch the same itch.

It felt good to do something with his hands, something that felt a little more satisfying and productive than cleaning the same things over and over or endlessly doing laundry, but as he mixed the ingredients in a bowl he couldn’t help but feel a bit like a house husband. His life wasn’t bad, per se, but sometimes when he had too much time to think—which was quite a lot—he couldn’t help but feel this strange sense of emptiness. They never went out, they never did much of anything. Diego did, presumably, while he was at work or running errands, and Cecil didn’t want to seem ungrateful that he himself didn’t have to work, but… maybe he wanted to. Maybe that’s what was missing.

His ruminations effectively put a damper on his chipper baking mood, but once the pan was in the oven and the chocolate scent started to waft through the house, it returned a bit.

When Diego came in the door he looked a little thrown by the smell, and Cecil was suddenly filled with doubt. Maybe Diego hated brownies, and the smell of them, and chocolate in general, after all there was probably a reason that this box had just been sitting in the cabinet unmade.

“Are you… baking?”

“Yeah,” Cecil admitted, sliding over at the counter to block the pan from view. “I made brownies.”

“Really?” Diego put down his bag and came closer. “We had a brownie mix?”

“I found it in the back of the cabinet. I was thinking I would surprise you.”

Diego’s expression softened. “It smells amazing.”

Cecil let out a relieved breath. Diego slid an arm around his waist and pulled him close, pulling a squeak from Cecil’s throat. He pressed his lips to Cecil’s temple. “Thank you, honey. That was very thoughtful.”

He still didn’t kiss him on the mouth. Cecil wondered if he wanted him to be the one to initiate that, so that he would be sure Cecil was comfortable with it, or if he just wasn’t used to taking the lead. Or if it was something else entirely.

They decided to eat brownies before dinner because they were proper adults. Cecil bumped into the counter getting a plate and the knife in his pocket thumped against it, digging into his leg slightly, not really enough to hurt, but he froze, eyes wide. Had Diego heard that?

He chanced a glance over his shoulder, but Diego was looking at something on his phone, and a moment later Cecil wasn’t even sure what he was being so paranoid about. Why would Diego think anything of a thump against the counter?

Cecil couldn’t remember exactly when he’d started toting a knife around, but he kept transferring it into his pants every morning, getting the acute sense every time he touched the handle that it was for his own self defense, and that he’d known what he was doing when he’d started carrying it. He didn’t know exactly what that entailed and didn’t like to look too deeply into the feeling, because the only thing he encountered in his day to day life that he could possibly defend himself against was Diego. And he didn’t want to think too much about _that._ It only gave him a shiver of unease when he looked at the man and reminded him that the front door was always locked from the outside.

He let Diego cut the brownies, because he always had a knife on him, too, and had less qualms about showing it than Cecil did about his own. Cecil leaned against the counter and watched his back, letting his fingers white-knuckle against the handle of the drawer behind him. The thought of having to use his knife to hurt Diego made him want to turn his own skin inside out. It would be impossible to go through with, unthinkable.

“I was thinking…” he started hesitantly once Diego had rinsed his knife and handed him a plate. “About the possibility of me...working.”

Diego’s mouth twisted. He didn’t look up from his plate. “Really?”

“I just thought I could pull my own weight a little more around here.”

“Were these,” he held his forkful of brownie in Cecil’s direction, “just a way to butter me up?”

“No,” Cecil said immediately. “I was just thinking about this as I made them.”

He was met with such a lengthy period of quiet that he was fully ready to take it all back, to assure Diego that he was grateful for everything, especially the luxury of not having to work. But finally Diego spoke. “You want to do radio?”

Cecil held very still. “That would be amazing.”

Diego nodded. He was frowning, but Cecil thought it looked more considering than upset. “I have the day off tomorrow. We’ll see what we can figure out.”

Cecil let out his breath and perked up. That had gone much better than he thought it could. He set in on his brownie, for the first time actually looking forward to tomorrow.

 

At breakfast in the morning, Diego sat with a packet of paper next to him on the counter. Cecil took his seat with a sense of anticipation, curious if this had something to do with what they’d talked about last night.

“What’s that?”

“I made a run to the radio station and picked this up,” said Diego, seeming pleased with himself. Without even knowing what it was yet, Cecil couldn’t help but be touched. He had asked for something that might have even been a bit unreasonable and Diego had already been working on figuring it out for him before breakfast. “It’s a script of the broadcast that—the, uh, last host was going to make the day he quit. It’s outdated now, but I thought it could work as good practice so you can see if you’ve got the hang of it, since right now you don’t know what’s going on in town to report on. I thought you could record yourself reading it in my office. Then if you do want to pursue it, we could talk about how you might actually do the job.”

“Oh, okay,” Cecil said, unsure how much of his eagerness it would be proper to display. On the one hand, he wanted Diego to know he was grateful and excited for the opportunity. But on the other, even though Diego seemed alright with it, he still felt a little bit like he was stepping out of line and asking for too much. “That would be great.”

He was impatient all through breakfast. When they’d finally cleaned up, he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. So much for disguising his eagerness.

“Can I do it now?”

Diego chuckled, apparently charmed by his enthusiasm, so that was good at least. He unlocked the door to the office and showed Cecil the recording equipment. Cecil got all the levels on the audio console to where he wanted them, testing the sound in his headphones and gain staging each plugin. His fingers felt right pushing around the little sliders and turning the dials, like every time his hands had felt restless over the past several weeks this is what they had been itching to do. Once he was satisfied, he took the script from Diego at his side and hit record.

“Feel free to romanticize your own pain,” he said into the mic, with the appropriate level of gravitas. “If you do this enough, it can become merely a compelling backstory rather than present, debilitating trauma. Welcome to Desert Bluffs.”

Something about the texture of those last words felt wrong in his mouth as he said them, like his teeth didn’t quite fit together properly. He paused with a faint twinge in his stomach.

Next to him, Diego straightened, chin raised and looking to the office door like he’d heard something. Cecil removed one headphone, listening.

“What—”

He heard it the second time, a loud, insistent banging on the front door of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> probably the most jarring thing about this chapter is the sudden appearance of a laundry room that's never been mentioned before. I do apologize. I swear it's always been there


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm embarrassed to say this is the first multi-chaptered fic I've ever completed, considering how many I've started, but I'm also glad to prove to myself that I actually am capable of finishing something longer than a one-shot.
> 
> I guess I don't have much else to say here other than THANK YOU, and as always I greatly welcome your thoughts.

The muscles in Diego’s body seemed to crystallize from head to toe. Watching it felt familiar for some reason Cecil couldn’t place. He stalked silently out into the living room and Cecil hesitantly followed, slipping off the headphones from around his neck. Diego had to raise up on his toes just the slightest amount to see out the peephole, a fact which Cecil found disproportionately endearing even though the peephole was probably just installed a little too high.

“Who is it?” Cecil whispered.

“My ex-boyfriend.” He drew a small pistol from his pocket and held it low at his hip.

“Is he dangerous?” asked Cecil, staring wide-eyed at the gun.

Diego shook his head, lips quirking. “Not him.” Then, louder, “I know you’re not alone!”

“Diego, please, just talk to me. Just open the door.” Cecil thought he knew that voice. But why?

“What’s going on, Diego?” Cecil hissed.

“Go away, Kevin,” said Diego. “I’m only going to talk to Carlos.”

“Come on, Diego—”

“Step back from the door and get Carlos.”

There was a pause during which Cecil imagined Kevin letting out a long sigh, and then his voice came pitched louder. “Carlooos!”

Carlos. That name spoke to something deep and essential in his chest. Cecil’s heart was already lodged somewhere in his trachea before Diego reached over and threaded their fingers together, giving a squeeze as if offering him strength. “Cecil, listen. This guy’s a creep and you don’t have to engage with him. Back before you can remember, he used to stalk you. I think he’s mostly harmless but if you want, you can go back to your room while I deal with him. Either way, I’ll be here in front of you and he won’t be able to hurt you.”

A stalker? Cecil’s brow pinched together as Diego talked. No, that wasn’t right.

“I’ll stay here with you,” he said quietly.

Diego nodded and squinted through the peephole again, then opened the door. The sun shone into Cecil's eyes and hit his face, jarring and warm, his first direct exposure to the outdoors in months. He winced away from it and had to blink several times before he could see anything.

On the doorstep stood a man, his hair a mess and dark eyes bright with feeling. He looked like he hadn’t changed clothes in at least a few days, had shadows under his eyes, and looked a little bit like he was or had recently been suffering sunstroke. His jaw was tensed, something his dentist had been trying to get him to work on, and his nailbeds Cecil knew were stained various odd colors from the many substances he worked with on a daily basis and his perhaps unwise tendency to forgo gloves. The man barely glanced at Diego, gaze finding his in a moment.

“Cecil,” he breathed, and Cecil fell back in love instantly.

A moment later Carlos noticed their entwined hands, and his expression hardened, his jawline becoming impossibly sharper. It was almost unfairly attractive. Cecil’s eyes tore away and swept up and down his frame, not seeing a weapon. Diego had a gun.

It was one of those moments of immediate, crisp clarity, the strongest sensation of the sort Cecil had experienced after day after endless day of fog. Unless Carlos had something up his sleeve, Diego had the clear upper hand here.

“Get your hands off him,” said Carlos.

Cecil looked warily at the man who owned his heart and said, “Why does he look like you, Diego?”

Doubt and hurt flickered across Carlos’ face. It wrenched something loose in Cecil’s chest, made him long to take it back and murmur reassurances in Carlos’ ear for hours, years, but the look of smug triumph in Diego’s eye when Cecil couldn’t take it anymore wasn’t much better.

“Cecil, you know me,” urged Carlos softly, with a heartbreaking note of uncertainty. “It’s me. Carlos.” The look on his face wasn’t one entirely devoid of hope, though. He still had some faith in Cecil. That, unfortunately, wouldn’t do. He had to keep Diego confident, at all costs.

Cecil had become quite the actor in the last few weeks, although sometimes he had trouble remembering that it was an act, which made it much easier. This, now, was his most crucial performance ever, and the most difficult, because Diego wasn't the only audience. A few weeks ago he didn’t know if he would have had it in him. But he felt smarter than he was then, shrewder, simply because he had to be.

He shrunk back from the door slightly, clinging to Diego’s arm and looking to him for help, wide-eyed. “Diego…”

“You’re scaring him, don’t speak to him.” Diego couldn’t quite keep his enjoyment of this situation out of his tone, but then again maybe he wasn’t trying to. “Just talk to me. What is it you want?”

It took a moment for Carlos to respond; he seemed to be having trouble processing exactly what was happening. He was still looking at Cecil, and Cecil stared back with a guarded expression bordering on impassive until the last remaining shreds of confidence and color drained out of his sweet Carlos.

"I thought you were lying before," he finally rounded on Diego, voice like a blade's edge. "What did you do to him?"

"Just tell us what you're doing here so you can get on your way," Diego said, swinging the pistol in his hand in a wide, careless arc.

"You know exactly what I'm doing here," gritted Carlos.

"Refresh my memory. Some of us seem to have… forgotten."

"I'm here for Cecil." Every word was measured and carefully controlled; Cecil could picture him dropping each one precisely into a flask.

"What, were you thinking of taking him by force?" Diego laughed, clearly also aware of his advantage. The question was accompanied by another wild gesture, another swing of the gun. Cecil's heart stuttered in his chest.

"Careful, Diego, you're making me nervous with that." He wrapped his fingers around the hand holding the pistol, startled when the man’s grip went lax under his touch. He took a shallow breath and slid the gun easily out of Diego’s hand to hold it at his own side.

“Sorry, honey,” Diego murmured, pressing his lips briefly to Cecil’s temple. Cecil didn’t breathe. He didn’t think he possessed that ability anymore. He thought he’d made it the first time Diego had left him alone in the house without locking him in the bathroom, but this was really it; the full extent of Diego’s trust, a tangible, lead weight against his palm. He felt dizzy with it.

“Really, Kevin?” sighed Diego a moment later, apparently seeing something Cecil couldn’t with the way Diego was partially blocking his view of the outdoors. All he could see was Carlos, looking like he'd been slapped in the face, presumably from Diego's affectionate gesture. Cecil let go of his hand and took a slow step back, then two more.

“What did you think our plan was here, to ask nicely and hope for the best?” Kevin’s voice. “We didn't involve the police like you asked, but we stopped by the station and grabbed this out of my desk just in case you were full of shit. And would you look at that.”

“Am I expected to believe that you’re going to shoot me?” Diego asked dryly. “Cecil doesn’t _want_ to go with you.”

Kevin took a step into Cecil’s line of sight and he could see that he wielded a pistol similar to the one currently in his own possession, held tremulously in both of Kevin's hands and pointed at Diego. “I might. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“I think I’ve got some idea, and it’s not this, baby.” _Baby_ , he said, with Cecil standing right there. That seemed a little rude.

Kevin seemed to think so too, if likely for a different reason. “Don’t call me that. Not if it doesn’t mean something.”

“What do you want, Diego?” Carlos asked quietly, sounding grey and tired.

“I want you to understand. Cecil doesn’t know you, he doesn’t like you, doesn’t trust you. He’s not going with you, and even if he did it would never be what you want it to be."

“It doesn’t matter,” said Carlos without hesitation.

“What doesn’t matter?” Diego sounded irritated, his fingers twitching at the hem of his pocket. Cecil stiffened, a response that had been soundly conditioned into him every time Diego’s hand strayed near there in that particular way. In their recent, more peaceful times, he’d forgotten.

“Who or what Cecil knows, what he remembers and doesn’t remember. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t love me today, or ever again. He still deserves to get out of this place.”

Diego’s face turned dark, and his hand slipped into his pocket to close around something they couldn’t see, but Cecil knew. Carlos didn’t know, wouldn’t know, but he knew. Oh God, he had to do something.

“Diego, no. Don’t.” His voice sounded small.

“Cecil.” The tendons in Diego’s arm pulled taut, standing out against his skin. Most people wouldn’t think of attempting to use a knife in a gun fight, but he seemed quite confident that Kevin was all talk. Cecil’s bones and nerves remembered deeply what it had been to feel true terror, to see this man stalking deceptively calmly toward him and be certain that he was about to die. His head remembered it in the way he still got frequent tension headaches even months later, and he could see now in the harsh planes of Diego's face as he stared down Carlos emotionlessly what he should have known the whole time: despite the fact that Diego was now in the habit of kissing the temple that he had once violently slammed into the wall, he was still that man.

“No, listen, please Diego, just calm down.” They weren’t exactly the right words, since Diego seemed remarkably calm, but Cecil was nearing hysterical and couldn’t quite form a sentence adequately expressing his need for Diego to not be who he was. He probably looked like the one out of his head, begging and on the verge of tears while Diego stood there composed with his hand in his pocket.

“Why, what’s he doing?” Kevin asked, taking another step forward. “What do you have in there, Diego?”

“A knife, he’s got a knife.”

“ _Cecil_ ,” Diego hissed.

“You don’t have to hurt these people,” Cecil said.

“He’s the one with a gun pointed at me!”

“But he’s not going to shoot it, right? You’re not going to shoot it.”

Kevin’s gaze locked with his, and Cecil wasn’t the one with pistol raised and aimed, but in that moment he might as well have been. He could see his outstretched, trembling arms and knuckles turned pale from the pressure of clutching at the grip as if seeing them from inside Kevin’s own head, and he knew he was right, could feel it as a wave of understanding passing between the two of them. He wouldn’t shoot Diego. He couldn’t. It would be an impossible move to go through with, unthinkable.

Diego drew his hand from his pocket, the knife handle held between deft fingers. He twirled it once at his side as if to prove he knew what he was doing with it. “You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you, Cecil?” He turned his head to point the knife at him.

“No,” choked Cecil brokenly. Not if it got Carlos hurt. “Of course not.”

“Does it feel good, knowing that whatever it is you have with him is all because of tricks and lies?” Carlos cut in, clearly trying to draw Diego’s focus away from Cecil, but oh _God_ , he needed to stop talking right now. Diego’s hand twitched, and he turned his face away from Cecil so he didn't see his expression, but the rigid, drawn up muscles of his back told him all he needed to know. Carlos’ eyes had shed their lackluster dullness, flashing with fire. “To know that even if he chose to stay, none of it would ever be real? You barred your doors against the one thing that was really, truly real, and for what?”

Cecil could see it all coming. He could see Diego snapping and striking with the knife, sinking its blade through Carlos’ clothes into his flesh, in some vital place, he could see the round ‘o’ of Carlos’ mouth as it would open in surprise, moments before his shirt would spread crimson. He could see it all.

He lifted the pistol in his hand, fighting to control the tremors wracking his frame. Diego’s trust in him was a small, steel handgun and a turned back.

Diego snapped. Cecil squeezed the trigger.

 

 

 

A sharp pain pulled in his wrist. He stumbled, his right ear ringing.

The knife fell to the floor. Diego sunk to his knees, and Cecil shortly followed. Once he could hear again, his ears filled with a piercing shriek. He thought it might be coming from himself for a moment, or maybe even that it was just in his head, the sound of his own shattered psyche, but then he saw Kevin dropping his gun and rushing forward, his mouth contorted wide and horrified. The red that Cecil had pictured so clearly spreading across Carlos’ shirt now soaked into Diego’s, blooming like a flower in his side.

“What did you _do??_ ” Kevin screamed. He knelt by Diego and caught him when he tipped forward, cradling his head. “Diego—no—no, no no, what did you do—”

“Cecil,” Carlos came and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Oh my God, okay, I just need… I’m gonna call—” He pulled out his phone and dialled, holding it to his ear. “Hello, yes, a man has been shot. I need an ambulance. Yeah, I can give you the address, just let me remember…”

Kevin pulled his shirt over his head—Cecil’s shirt—and balled it up, tearing at the fabric covering Diego’s torso and pressing the shirt against it. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do…” Diego made some kind of pained grunting, gurgling sound and Kevin let out a sob.

“An ambulance is coming,” Carlos announced. “Cecil—can you hear me? I’m going to try to help Kevin.”

The weight of his arm was gone a moment later. Carlos pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and then he was kneeling next to Diego too. “That’s good, you’re actually doing really great, Kevin, keep that pressure on it. Help me prop him up so we can get this under him and pressed into his back.”

“Oh my God, there’s so much blood,” Kevin whimpered, doing as he was told.

“Try and stay calm for him. Do you have a first aid kit here?”

“Y-yeah, um. I think, um, on the top shelf of the closet, the one in the hall.”

Carlos was on his feet again, gone, and then back, rifling through the box. “I don’t think there’s much useful in here, it’s not very complete… I think what we’ve got going is just as good. Keep applying that pressure, see if you can pack the shirt in as much as possible.”

“Diego, an ambulance is on its way… you’re… it’s gonna be okay, just hold on, okay? Just hold on, please, Diego.”

“Cecil, you still with us?”

“What were you thinking, _shooting_ him??”

“He’s in enough distress as it is, alright?”

"Oh my God, oh my God…"

Cecil took a stuttering breath into his lungs. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You’re _sorry?_ ”

“It’s okay, Cecil. You were under extreme stress and he was trying to attack me."

"Did he, did he get you?"

"Just grazed me, just a scratch. It's nothing."

His shirt was torn, right around the clavicle. Cecil shuddered.

“Kevin.” Diego’s fingers twitched, like maybe he wanted to reach for him.

“You don’t need to try to talk, Diego, unless it’s crucial.” Kevin brushed his hair back from his face. Diego grunted in response, eyes wide and breath coming in short gasps. His eyes rolled over to lock with Cecil's. Through the pain, he could see confusion and hurt in that gaze, so piercing and accusing that for a moment Cecil was convinced that Diego was reaching into him physically to wrench shards of ice through his chest. Cecil looked away, and hated himself for it.

The pool of blood around Diego and Kevin was inching closer on the hardwood floor, and Cecil tried not to gag. He didn’t think he fully lost consciousness, exactly, although he must have drifted away in some form. It wasn’t to a place that offered any relief, in any case. After a haze of blaring electronic wailing and flashing lights through the open door, he was cognizant of a few snatches of conversation, but it all seemed distant. If he could have turned it all off through sheer power of will, he would’ve.

Carlos' voice. “I’m sorry.”

The squeak of shoes slipping on wet floor, and a faint whimper. “I’m going on the ambulance. I-I have to—”

“Of course. But Kevin—be careful? Just because he’s hurt—”

“I know. But I can’t—he shouldn’t be alone…”

“Go, go.”

The next thing he was distinctly aware of was Carlos gently shaking his shoulder, sitting on the floor next to him. “This EMT needs to check you over, alright?”

Cecil jerked and straightened. The floor was dark with blood, but empty save for the knife. “Where’s Diego? Is he—?” His throat closed over the last word.

“He was alive when the ambulance left,” said a young woman in a vest. “This man tells me you’ve been a bit slow to respond. Do you have any injuries that you’re aware of, any pain?”

He couldn’t take his eyes off the floor in the entryway. There were big dots of red leading out the door. “Why?"

"Well, so I know if there's anything I need to help you with. Do you feel pain anywhere?"

"Um." To help him with? "My wrist? And—I mean—I’ve got this headache, but I do a lot of the time.”

“There’s a bit of swelling here. Can you move it?”

Cecil winced and nodded.

“It’s likely a sprain. Anything else?”

Any other pain? He didn’t know how to answer. His brow was sticky with sweat and he couldn’t stop shivering. “I...”

“What about from earlier, while you were here?” Carlos asked gently. “Did he hurt you at all?”

“No,” Cecil answered automatically.

“This headache you have, you say you get them often?” the EMT asked.

So many questions. Cecil’s brain was being overloaded. “My… head got slammed into a wall a few… a while ago.” Carlos tensed at his side.

“Besides these headaches, have you been experiencing any dizziness, ringing in the ears, sensitivity to light, fatigue, anxiety, loss of ability to focus or loss of memory, or insomnia?”

“That’s quite a list you’ve got there,” Carlos commented.

“All of them,” said Cecil.

“All of them, really? Those are symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. They can last for weeks or even months after the initial injury.”

“Oh.” He didn’t bother mentioning there may have been several other factors.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Cecil Palmer.”

“Can you tell me what year it is?”

“Um...”

“Can you tell me who he is?” She looked to Carlos. “Does he know you?”

Carlos shook his head. “I-I don’t think—”

“This is Carlos,” said Cecil, curling his hand over Carlos’ on the wood floor. “This is the man I’m going to marry.” Cecil could feel the hitch in Carlos’ breath through their hands. He turned on Cecil with wide, searching eyes.

“Is that right?” asked the EMT. Carlos swallowed audibly and nodded.

“Is Diego going to make it?” Cecil asked.

“Our paramedics know what they’re doing, sir, and it’s not a big town so the hospital is very close by.”

So basically what he was hearing was she had no idea. It felt like something was trying to crawl up his throat and get out. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. Carlos squeezed his hand.

“Sir?”

“I shot him.”

She tapped her papers on the floor to straighten them and stood. “Save that for the police report. I’m gonna get some ice to bring down the swelling on your wrist and then you should get some rest before you’re roped into a bunch more questions.”

Carlos helped him up after they got the ice pack for his wrist and led him back to the bedroom. It felt strange being in this room with the person he had spent hours, weeks in here longing for. Carlos seemed jarringly out of place in this environment, this part of his life. Cecil felt inexplicably embarrassed.

Carlos wrapped him up in blankets and laid him down on the bed, then laid down too, facing him. The blankets didn’t quite stop his shivering but at least they were a nice, solid weight on him. Carlos was quiet, seeming content to give him the space to talk or not talk as he wished. Cecil felt a nearly smothering wave of affection for this man.

“I knew it was you the whole time,” he said. "I was just too scared to let him know I knew. With the gun and everything."

"Oh. _Oh._ That was smart," Carlos said, gently trailing a hand through his hair. Everything he did was so gentle, Cecil wanted to cry. Although maybe not for that reason alone. "You had me really scared there. But I don't understand. Why did he think you didn't know me in the first place?"

“There was this pill… I don’t even know where it came from, but it was gonna make me forget. I pretended to take it. Or rather, I did take it, but then I made myself throw up. It still… kinda worked sometimes, though.”

“A pill?” Carlos’ brow was furrowed in either scientific confusion or regular indignation, but then his eyes widened. “Oh. I think I might know where it came from.”

“You do?”

He nodded grimly. “StrexCorp. It's just a theory." He shook his head. “Huh. Maybe Kevin’s dreams of revenge weren’t so hairbrained after all. Seems like Diego had the same idea, just directed at the wrong people."

“What?”

"If I'm right, then Kevin stole those pills from StrexCorp, and if they were meant to erase memory, then it seems pretty likely that's what they used on him."

"Oh," Cecil said, slotting that bit of info into place. It made sense. Diego wanted Carlos to feel the same pain as he had. He wondered if Kevin even knew that the first time he remembered meeting Diego wasn’t really the first time. He drew one of the blankets tighter around his shoulders. “I don’t much like StrexCorp.”

“No,” Carlos huffed, eyes softening and carding his fingers down and behind Cecil’s ear, as if he was tucking back a nonexistent strand of hair. It tickled. “You’ve been so brilliant, doing what you needed to do to survive this. You saved yourself. And me too.” He was looking at Cecil like he was a bit in awe. Cecil saw Diego's tentative smile and red rapidly spreading through white fabric and squeezed his eyes shut, but that just made the image brighter, so he opened them again, breathing harshly through his nose. Carlos’ expression had slid more regretful. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner. Time moves a lot faster here than it does in Night Vale, but I still wasted a bunch of it being too scared to think clearly. I don’t know what you must have thought.”

It did? That would explain… Had it always been like that? Carlos had never said. He’d spent so much time here, and he’d never said… Cecil didn’t want to ask how much faster, how long he had actually taken to get here. He didn’t want his brain converting that math into the length of the year they’d spent apart. No, he couldn’t take that now. That would be a conversation for another time.

He didn’t think he could answer. What could be said about hopelessness heavy enough to tie around his ankle and drown him? He just took Carlos’ hand. Carlos clung to it like his hand alone would anchor Cecil to his side for the rest of time. “I love you,” he said. "Immeasurably." Cecil melted and leaned forward, kissing him with dry and unsteady lips and hoping that conveyed the same sentiment. When he pulled back there were tears in his fiance’s eyes. “I’m sorry.” Carlos gave a little off-balance laugh, swiping at his eyes with one hand. “I’m supposed to be the one holding you together.”

“It’s okay,” Cecil found the voice to say, squeezing his hand. There would be plenty of opportunity for that later. Maybe sooner rather than later. He took a shaky breath. “Did Kevin go with him in the ambulance?” Carlos nodded. “How did Diego seem? I mean… did it seem like…”

“It was hard to say.” Carlos looked down and away as he said it.

“Carlos,” Cecil said, propping himself up on one elbow. There was something in that look. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Carlos!”

He sighed. “When they were putting him on the ambulance, I overheard one of the paramedics say he was starting to go into hypovolemic shock.”

Hypovolemic shock. He tried not to hear it as a death sentence. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not. But he’s getting as much medical attention as anyone can.”

“Hypovolemic shock, what does that— is that—”

“It comes from excessive blood loss. I’m not sure what the survival rate is with that, but I’m sure it’s higher when you’re already in an ambulance.”

Cecil curled in on himself. “I didn’t even say anything to him… I didn’t try to help him, you and Kevin did everything and I just… I just _watched_...”

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Carlos drew him into his arms, rubbing circles into his blanket-covered back. “You were in shock.”

Cecil squeezed his eyes shut. “He trusted me. He let me take the gun out of his hand because it was making me nervous, and I shot him with it.”

“Cecil.” Carlos’ tone was firm. “That man held you prisoner in his home. He hurt you, he drugged you, he lied to and manipulated you. He could have killed you, he threatened to from the very beginning.”

“Instead I killed him.”

“Even if that’s true, no one would blame you. Least of all me, I was outright baiting him. You didn’t do anything wrong, Cecil.”

Cecil let himself be hugged, nearly nauseous with guilt. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to fully believe that. But Carlos' arms were strong and warm around him, and it would only upset Carlos if he said that aloud. Instead he tried to focus on the fact that Carlos had gotten through with only a scratch because of what he'd done, and that was worth it, it had to be. He pressed his face into the sweaty, sliced open material of Carlos' shirt and let himself let go. Carlos held him through the tremors and tears and frame-wracking sobs so violent he was sure if Carlos hadn't been there holding him together his pieces would all have flown apart. It lasted forever, his body just finding more and more tears to produce, but he was free to let those out, too, because Carlos was here and he was safe.

Carlos murmured soothing things into his ear through it all, rubbing his back, and eventually Cecil’s chest tired of heaving. He pressed his lips just above the shallow cut over Carlos’ collarbone, spent. "I was sure I'd never see you again," he whispered, and Carlos shivered from his breath.

"It's all over," he assured Cecil. Cecil drank in his voice and his scent and the feel of his skin, and tried to internalize that statement.

It wasn’t entirely true, of course. After not enough time spent matching his breathing with Carlos’, limbs tangled together, someone came knocking on the open door to pull them outside for questioning. Carlos huffed irritably and pulled himself and then Cecil to a sitting position on the bed. Cecil dug the crusted tears from the corners of his eyes with his knuckles.

“This house…” Carlos said, nose scrunching up. “I definitely didn’t miss this smell. What _is_ that?”

“What smell?”

Carlos just gave him a look, before they headed out to the living room. Caution tape now marked off the scene. Cecil froze in front of the open front door, the sweat on his skin cold with dread. He was going to have to talk to the police about what happened. He didn’t even want to talk about it with Carlos, let alone strangers. Would they put him in handcuffs? Would they make him condemn a man who might be dead or dying?

Voices from outside bounced off his ears; most clearly were the officers around their cars, but he could hear sounds of traffic down the road and more distantly, kids shouting, maybe in a park. It had all been just a stone’s throw away this whole time. The threshold of this doorway had been an insurmountable barrier, and now that it stood wide open he found himself paralyzed to cross it.

Carlos took his hand, and the voices dimmed. He felt his support through the tips of his fingers and glanced over to see the face of someone who maybe didn’t completely understand every strange emotion weighing on Cecil's chest, and hopefully never would, but who was doing and would continue to do what he could to sustain him through it. That was, after all, how relationships worked. He clung to Carlos’ hand and stepped into the sunlight.


End file.
